Quite the Revelation

I recently had an epiphany.

I was looking out my kitchen window at the backyard, and its contents.

The compost heap. Which worked (surprise!) this year, for most of the summer...till I put the sweet potatoes on top of it. The sweet potatoes had sprouted mid-July on my counter. By mid-August, they actually had leaves. That's when I gave up and sat them on top of the compost heap. I had delayed putting them out, because it was too late in the season for them to grow, anyway! We have such a short growing season here - mid-July might as well have been December, as far as hoping for any baby sweet potatoes to be harvested. But I couldn't bring myself to throw the budding plants in the garbage, either.

I was stuck. The potatoes were living beings. So, in the end, I gave up and put them on top of the compost heap, figuring Old Man Winter would seal their fate much more surely than I could.

It also meant the end of turning over the compost heap.

Scratch one compost heap.

So then I looked across the lawn where my hollyhocks had bloomed this summer. These were hollyhocks that my Grandfather had brought to Greenfield Park from Dunvegan and grew to great heights despite my Grandmother's disdain. One summer a hollyhock reached twelve feet in height! Grandpa was thrilled!

He was also blinded by his love of his hollyhocks. They were all prone to a dreadful blight. The plants were always spindly, with the foliage rusting away from the ground up, so that the flowers bloomed and were consumed by the blight one by one all the way up the stem. Really, they looked dreadful.

Mine were spared this blight, but some insect devoured them. I got one lovely picture of them, and one week later the plant had been razed. It looked like a matchstick, on the day that I was surveying things from my kitchen window, about to have my epiphany.

Then I looked at the deck, with my single potted plant on it - a potato. Not a sweet potato, just an ordinary potato that had - you guessed it - sprouted - and I had - you guessed it - planted it!

This time I did it during the correct growing season and I bought the correct shape of pot and I tried, I really did try to take care of it. Just then when I was looking at it though, it wasn't looking so good. The plant had grown really tall - not getting enough light. And insects had been having a good time munching on it. It had fallen to one side, still in the upright pot, because it was so tall, half pulling the original potato out. I don't know if there are any baby potatoes in there. In truth, it looked pretty pathetic.

There used to be a matching pot there beside the potato...that one had been started much earlier, when I tried to grow ginger. Some ginger I bought at the grocery store sprouted, and I looked up how to grow it on the internet. Promises of an unending supply of fresh ginger and a beautiful houseplant to boot convinced me I could do this. I got two more pieces of ginger to keep it company, and my three pieces of ginger began to grow beautifully inside the house, and eventually went outside on the deck, to be joined later by the potato in its matching pot.

Nobody told me the ginger would be so beautiful! It's leaves are like an artist's conception of leaves. Just looking at the leaves brought me inner peace! It didn't take me long to start talking to my ginger plants, saying good morning and good night, and telling them how beautiful they were.

In short, they basically became pets.

And so, one day, I was faced with a recipe that required me to hack off a piece of one of their babies. Just lift up this beautiful, living thing I'd been talking to every day, saw off one of its limbs, and shove it back down in the dirt.

Nuh-uh. I gave the plant away to a dear friend shortly after that, who explained that I had over-watered it unforgiveably. "I don't care," I said miserably, "just take it away and give it a better home. I can't keep it alive and I can't use it. Just take it." It was almost as bad as giving away a cherished pet. And so my potato plant sat alone on the deck, minus its ginger companion.

Lastly, I turned my gaze to the pot of dill on my kitchen counter, barely two days old, fresh from the grocery store. It was turning yellow already, and in my heart in knew. I knew what its fate would be. I'd end up throwing it out, because I wouldn't find time to hang it to dry or to wash it and freeze it.

I had all these good intentions with my plants, but none of them ever turned out.

And that's when I had my epiphany.

See, Grandma and Grandpa lived on a farm. They raised chickens. My Dad and Stepmom had a hobby farm that kept us in vegetables for a good nine months of the year. I grew up learning how to freeze and pickle and can and preserve things. Since I was a little girl, in the back of my mind, I always figured I'd end up...

Being a farmer.

My epiphany?

I am not cut out to be a farmer. I'd be a dreadful farmer! Cripes, I talk to my frigging plants - can't you see me naming my little hens or piglets or la-a-a-mbs? I would never in a zillion years be able to slaughter an animal - I can't harvest a frickin' ginger root! I can't put a sprouted potato into a compost heap and turn it over!

I don't have to be a farmer!

And the silliest part of this is, it's such a relief! Like I'm still in high school, trying to work out what I wanna be when I grow up! I'm 59 freakin' years old, and I just crossed "farming" off the list! Like I can't wait for my Monday morning appointment with the guidance counsellor to say - Hey! I don't wanna be a farmer anymore! We can cross that one off!

Only, the office closed 40-odd years ago, it just took me this long to catch on!

Guess I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed...