How can it be July already? We were working every day in the garden. Raccoons came at night but were unable to get into the garden. They climbed high in the mulberry trees, four of them at once. "Did you shoot them?" asked a neighbor. No, we didn't. They came every night and ate mulberries. And so came the scarlet tanagers, the cedar waxwings, the Baltimore orioles, even my husband. Everyone loved the mulberries.
Next came the tomato horn worms.
Mornings start out quietly. My husband and my brother-in-law are standing and staring at the tops of the tomatoes. Amazingly for their size, the horn worms are hard to see. My husband says this is about pattern recognition. You have to look for something slightly out of the ordinary. So they stand and stare. Every once in a while, they say, "here's one," and they cut off the branch and put the horn worm, branch and all, in a box. This is because I have insisted they be saved. I've read that tomato horn worms turn into hummingbird moths. Since I love hummingbird moths, we save the horn worms. At first, they are alone in the garden. So when I come over quietly, they don't hear me. They are talking the language of men. "Generals aren't as tough as they used to be," one says and the other agrees. Viet Nam Veterans both, they talk with some experience. "It's all political now," the other says and both agree.
About the military I know next to nothing despite the fact that my husband is a veteran and my son was in the Air Force for nine years. The garden is my General. She tells me what to do, when to harvest, when to weed, when to water, and what to pick.
Some things were coming in. We still had great piles of cucumbers nearly every day, zucchini, more tomatoes, lettuce, the beans were starting, and best of all, the sweet corn came in at the end of July.
"The Garden is my General." That should be the title of the book I know you'll write about your life. When I read that I had been in the AF for 9 years, I thought you had made a typo!
ReplyDeleteI know a few female Generals in the Air Force. One of them, I owe my career to (LtGen Ellen Pawlikowski) and the other I'm meeting next week. Her name is LtGen Susan J Helms. She is the commander of the 14th AF up at Vandenberg AFB. She's a former astronaut and still holds the record for the longest space walk (man or woman) at 8 hours, 56 min. But most impressive of all, she's a concert pianist and when she retires soon, she'll take that up professionally. She is my general; she tells me what to do. Your garden is yours.