Back To The Garden

"We are stardust,

Billion year old carbon,

We are golden,

Caught in the devil's bargain,

And we've got to get ourselves,

Back to the garden."

-- Woodstock by Joni Mitchell

What does a sane person do in an insane world? Well, there's always the garden. With a really crazy political season in full sway, with terrorism on the rise, and with the nation facing a debt burden of over 19 trillion dollars, walking out to the garden feels like a supremely sane thing to do. And in the garden, Linda and I have tomatoes. This year I have not done much pruning of the tomato plants, so they look like a tangled mess. But there is some order amongst the chaos because they are all growing in cages and the weeds are relatively few.

We have been enjoying the bounty of our tomato harvest by frequently eating bacon and tomato sandwiches, and sliced tomatoes with the purple hull peas, as well as tomatoes in salads and such like. They seem to be particularly tasty this year. We eat many tomatoes sliced. I like them sprinkled with salt and pepper. Linda enjoys them unseasoned.

A few weeks ago I harvested most of the potato crop. I had help as grandchildren Annie and Landon came over to lend a hand. Linda was gone to a quilting meeting with some of her friends. The children enjoyed digging great big potatoes out of the loose soil. It didn't take us long, so we had time to go inside for a refreshing drink and a couple of games of chess. Annie is showing some promise in that area. With Landon it is harder to say since he makes up his own rules as he goes along. He does know the name of all the pieces, however.

The cayenne and bell peppers have been good producers this year. I simply love fresh cayenne peppers with my peas and cornbread. Today Linda made what she calls an "Oklahoma lunch" with a pot of pinto beans, fried potatoes and cornbread. She also served fresh sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. Scrumptious! I ate a couple of cayenne peppers with my cornbread and beans. They sure spice things up. I tried to get Linda to try a pepper, but she thought it would be too hot. And this from the woman who always asks for the "really hot" hot sauce at La Huerta's! I told her the cayenne peppers weren't nearly as hot as that hot sauce, but she was adamant.

We had fresh peach cobbler for dessert. I rarely eat dessert, but this past week, all of a sudden, I got a hankering for something sweet. So we hopped in the truck and headed over to Van Zandt's Orchard and bought some peaches, a watermelon and a cantaloupe. Linda and I have eaten quite a bit of watermelon this summer. It is a great way to end a meal or, if you aren't really all that hungry, you can use watermelon as a meal replacer. Sure tastes better than Ensure, I can tell you that.

I was working at the shop the other day when I got a text from Linda informing me that one of the rabbits had gotten out of the cage. I had noticed the day before that the cage wasn't locked as securely as usual, but neglected to ask Linda why. I supposed that we had never lost a rabbit so weren't likely to now. Wrong. We lost our favorite rabbit by the name of Hazel and there has been no sign of him anywhere. He sure was a pretty thing and a favorite of all the grandchildren.

I have to admit that I haven't put as much into gardening this season as I did last year since I have been preoccupied with building bows and spending more time at the shop. Nevertheless, it would be almost unthinkable not to have something in the garden. Sometimes nearly everything Linda serves in a given meal comes from our own garden. There is a certain reward that comes with raising your own produce. And I believe that gardening is one of the best ways of maintaining your sanity -- not to mention the fact that I much prefer to focus on what I am raising in the garden than on what shenanigans our two very disappointing choices for president are up to. Happy Gardening!

Sam Byrnes is a Gentry-area resident and weekly contributor to the Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.