“So, when do we need to be there tomorrow?” I asked.
Don and I were having dinner on Saturday night. I don’t recall what we were having for dinner, since, as you will soon see, that was 473 days ago.
Don said, “Be where? What?”
I said, “Aren’t we doing that bike ride?”
Don said, “OH!”
Because, yes, indeed, we were doing that bike ride with his — er “our” — bike team the next morning at 7am.
A few minutes later, he was loading bikes on the car. I cleaned the kitchen. We went to bed at a reasonable hour. By 6:20 Sunday morning, we were en route to the rendezvous point. For 20-some miles, I managed to keep up and not fall off. A good start to the morning, and we could still make church!
We drove home. I showered, Don made French toast. We ate French toast. Don showered. We were off to church, with a slight detour about a jackhammer.
Because, well…long story short, there’s an ancient farmhouse we thought about buying last year before deciding it was too much work. It’s since been bought by a guy named Jeff. Jeff was renovating while living in a camper. But then his camper caught fire. Don stopped on a bike ride to commiserate and offer him tools but found that Jeff didn’t need tools. In fact, Jeff himself had a miniature jackhammer Don could use to break up the concrete patio that’s been slowly destroying the foundation of our house.
So we had to return Jeff’s jackhammer. THEN we were off to church. THEN we were off to Goodwill. THEN we were off to buy a sledgehammer to finish the concrete job. I thought, “I’ll just water the garden and read my book. It’s been a long day”
SMASH! SLAM! SMASH!
Don was breaking in the sledgehammer. “If I had a hammer/I’d hammer in the mor-orning…” I hummed.
SMASH!
“I’d hammer in the evening/all over this la-and…”
SLAM!
There was a lull. I picked up my book. But a thought had burrowed into my brain. Could one, ethically and morally, abandon one’s husband to smash concrete on a Sunday afternoon? Was that proper? Was it right? Probably not. I sighed and grabbed some work gloves. I was in the middle of rubble collection, when I remembered the plants.
I went to water the plants.
Where were the plants?
I mean, some of them were there, sure. But what happened to that tomato? And the two peppers? Why were they just…stems?
I recalled my avid-gardener therapist asking, the previous week, “Have you done anything to keep the critters out?”
I had not. The critters were in. I imagined them tangoing gleefully in the moonlight, stems of parsley clenched between their teeth as they dipped and twirled.
I went to buy chickenwire. By the time I’d returned, Don had somehow convinced two little neighbor boys that picking up rubble was fun. He’d also baked a loaf of bread. I supervised neighbor-boy playtime with the dogs while Don drove the bread down to Jeff. It was nearing 6:00, but we had to defend the crops.
We went down to see Neighbor Doug. Neighbor Doug had treated wood scraps from his hot tub deck build and plenty of advice, both about hot tubs (which we might need some day) and plant protection (which we needed immediately). Educated, we went to build a fence.
I noted that my legs felt unusual. Stretchy. Like the Leg Union, Local 465 was currently considering a vote on a general strike. I knelt in the grass and stapled chickenwire to the wooden sides of the raised bed.
Eventually, I left Don in the yard because I had a church committee meeting on Zoom. When I came out an hour later, it was dark, and our fence had turned in to a cage with wire clipped over the top of it.
“What’s that about?” I asked.
And Don told me about the crow who had swept down over the parsley and flown away with bunches in its mouth. I surveyed our garden prison and tried to muster some animosity for the crow-thief, but I couldn’t manage it.
Did I think, if only for a moment, that if we gave up the fight, took down the fence, and let nature take it’s course, I might, next Sunday, be allowed to sit down? Of course not. Don’t be silly. I love gardening.
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