Part IV: Spin – God’s Wild Children: #2 (Chapter 74)


N
ana’s vegetable garden, a careless patch of green about eight feet by eight feet with zig-zag rows, produced enough asparagus, tomatoes, green beans, wax beans, zucchini, and sweet peas to get us through Summer and part of Autumn.

Nana hated gardening, viewing it as a civic duty, an on-going chore the women in her neighborhood did because of growing up poor on Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota farms.

Although Nana fell into lockstep with her neighbors and planted the correct seeds, she, unlike the other women who cultivated, weeded, thinned, and hoed their rows until the first frost, would do just the minimum, enough to give the seedlings a head start.

Then she allowed nature to take its course.

Nana must have had the ultimate green thumb because most of her plants thrived, always bearing copious amounts of bounty – a Garden of Eden of sorts, where weeds co-existed with cultivated plants. Even the more delicate plants shared their root systems with the hardier ones: dandelions, young hollyhocks, mustard, goldenrod, red clover, sneezeweed, great plantain, and, at least once, bull thistle in full flower, towering over the tomato plants.




“It’s too pretty to pull,” she said when Pappa pointed out the offending weed.

“It does a garden good to compete with God’s wild children.”

The thistle stayed until first frost, when, I suspect, Pappa pulled the tenacious plant and poured weed killer into the hole.

Now, as we walked between the rows of disarray, I showed Danny how to choose the tomatoes that were ready for eating.

“The ripe ones will practically fall off the vine.”

Danny grabbed at one red tomato, but it wouldn’t budge. He twisted it, snapping it off the vine.

“No!” I yelled. “That’s not right! You can’t force it.”

“It looks ready.” Danny rolled the tomato around in his hands.

“It just looks that way.” My hands on hips. “But it’s not.”

Danny tossed the tomato into the air and caught it just before it hit the ground. “Whoa!” Up in the air again and down, rescued a second time just before impact.

“Stop it now before Nana sees you.”

“It’s just an old tomato you can’t even eat,” he said, dropping it into the bowl.

“Put it in the window a few days, and you can, so there.”

I pointed at a big blood-red tomato, the kind that has grown so fast that it bulges and creases at the stem. “There’s a ripe one.”

Danny ran through the patch and touched the tomato; it fell to the ground and split wide open, its juices oozing into the earth.



“You dummy!” I yelled. “Now look what you’ve done!”

“Girls,” Danny muttered as he picked up the ruined tomato and took a bite. He slurped tomato juice through his teeth. “Umm-mmm-mm...”

What a creep!



Copyright Notice

Unless otherwise specified, all works posted on The Fat Lady Sings are © 1991 - present, by Jennifer Semple Siegel, the author, webmaster, and owner of TheFatLadySings.comMost of the art artwork has been AI generated specifically for The Fat Lady Sings. Occasionally, combinations (layering) of two or more AI generations have been created for special effects. The prompts used for AI are generic and avoid referring to specific artists, dead or alive. Her works may not be reprinted or reposted without her express permission.

Privacy Notice

Although TheFatLadySings.com does not use third-party ads, this privacy notice is included so that visitors can make informed decisions regarding their internet privacy. Third-party advertisers serve ads when you visit some websites, and these companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having such information used by these companies, click here.