I have decided that the top of a newly grown potato is likely the most green thing I have ever seen. Looking down my little row of potatoes, I find myself hopeful of a good harvest this year. Soon it will be time to get the dirt pulled back up around them again to make their mounds a little taller. One row was a little too close to the side of the garden, leaving me little room to pull up the dirt. It’s one of those things I’d change if I could, but I’m learning to live with now. Lots of things in life are like that.

I was trying to get the tiller going the other day to run in between the rows and wasn’t having much luck at it. I called a friend of mine who runs a small repair business and he stopped by the house — no toolbox, no parts, no nothing. He pulled out a socket wrench from his back pocket, unscrewed the spark plug, screwed in another from his shirt pocket and pulled the tiller’s cord once. It started immediately. I felt like a stooge. Anyone can replace a spark plug, so why didn’t I do it? You tell me and we’ll both know. At least he is a friend and took pity on me, saving me the added embarrassment of paying for a service call. He explained that he often gets folks calling that their mower won’t start, only to find out they’ve left the blades engaged.

Others call to say a new chainsaw won’t run, only to have him show them that the kickback bar was activated. That made me feel less alone, but no less ignorant. I had to call him again about a week later when I ran over a rock that I had tossed out of the garden. I was trying to toss the rock into the road, but somehow it just didn’t quite make it. The rock ended up landing by the fence and the mower caught it with a big thump. I thought everything was still fine, since the mower kept running, but soon I noticed a tell-tale stripe in the mower’s path. I finished mowing the grass and peered beneath the deck, only to see that one end of the blade was bent downward. As I mowed the yard, the blade scalped the ground in a few places. As high as my grass had gotten, I didn’t really care. The main thing was getting it back down to a decent level before I accidentally started losing things, like cars and children.

Back in the garden early this week, I put my newly callused hands to use chopping out grass with the hoe. The tomatoes already have been attacked by bugs and some are not so pretty now, their leaves yellowish. Nothing starts off perfect, usually things have to get adjusted to their new environs. I added a little copper dust as a gardener’s blessing. I placed some composted cow manure in the row with the tomato and pepper plants, along with some powdered milk. Since calcium is a necessary thing, I figured I might try adding it directly to the soil with the fertilizer. Was I smart or not? We’ll see.

There is nothing quite as peaceful as taking slow rounds along the garden rows, looking at the small plants that are coming forth from ground that was so recently bare. I often find it hard to believe, this miracle of creation that we often take for granted. I wonder about that first garden, where the crops were always at hand and no one had to plant or reap.

No wonder they got into trouble; there wasn’t enough to keep them occupied. If I had nothing but time on my hands, I’d be into all sorts of things. My grandmother used to say, “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop and idle hands are his sharpest tools.”

I suppose by finding worthwhile goals in life and sticking to our purpose, then and only then can we be truly useful parts of our world.

Come to think of it, life is like a garden, isn’t it? We plant our seeds and then hope they grow. If we plant good seeds in good soil, we’ll have a good crop — likewise for poor seeds in poor soil. If our efforts do begin to mature, we nurture them and sometimes find ourselves surprised by the fruits, or lack thereof. What looks like fertile ground can sometimes fool you. We are struck by blight and insects that seek to take our health; we face intruders like crows, rabbits and deer who want to claim our harvest; and unwelcome crops like weeds and grass that try to rob our soil of nutrients and shade our productive plants. Every day, we must strive to stay on the path and find our way to the harvest. As for me, I’m looking forward to fresh tomatoes.

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