When I talked to my sister last Sunday, she said that I should hurry and finish her quilt because it's almost gardening time. That thought had already occurred to me, but I figured I had a few more weeks before planting time. The garden centers here aren't yet stocking their early vegetables, like broccoli and cabbage, and probably won't have them until at least the first of March. I have sweet pea seeds, and fava bean seeds, both of which could be planted now, but, to tell you the truth, I've been kind of bummed out on gardening. Last year's summer vegetable garden was such a phenomenal flop that I didn't even plant the fall crop seeds I'd bought. I had decided to cut back this year - maybe just a few tomato and squash plants - and it won't be time to plant those things for a couple of months.
Yesterday afternoon, I came home from work, put on my "house clothes," and went to the quilting machine, thinking I'd knock out the rest of my sister's quilt. (I only lack about a foot being done with the quilting.) I'd just tightened the knobs on the quilting frame and was sliding the machine into position when the telephone rang. It was my daughter-in-law, telling me that they were across the road at Nanny's house, and I'd have time to grab hugs from the grandsons if I'd come on down. I jumped into some shoes and walked down the driveway.
Long before I reached the house, I saw a wide strip of freshly-plowed earth in the garden spot. What in the world was up? The garden never gets officially plowed this early! For years, I've begged Pop-Pop to plow the garden for an early crop, but he has never, ever done it. But there sat the little tractor, with the disk attachment hooked to it, fresh dirt on its blades.
It was a pleasant evening, and everybody was out in the yard. Pop-Pop was sitting, smoking a cigarette, in the doorway of the tractor shed. I said hello to everybody, then turned to Pop-Pop. "What got into you?" I asked him, nodding toward the garden.
"Time to plant 'taters," he replied.
Taters? Who said anything about planting taters? I surely hadn't! I'd tried growing potatoes a few years ago - you can probably read about it in my 2008 posts - and it was a screaming failure.
"I figure 25 pounds of seed taters ought to do it," Pop-Pop added. He thumped his ashes.
Twenty-five pounds? Good grief! My one attempt at growing potatoes involved only a 5-pound bag of seed potatoes, just two half-rows, and that little bit nearly worked me to death. I had permanently marked potatoes off my list of things to grow.
"Well, allright," I said. "I'll go find some before the weekend."
He said he was going to disk it again today.
"Put a couple more rows on it," I told him. "I have some seeds...."
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