The Garden War

It's July, the temperature is 98 degrees and the humidity is about 95%, so it's time to pick green beans.

My husband and I have war every year when it is time to plant the garden. He loves to plant. He can't wait to get out and plow, disc and till. He's like the grandsons, he just loves to play in the dirt. I have been known to stand in the middle of the plowed area to keep him from making it bigger and bigger. He just loves to prepare the soil. I guess that's part of being a farmer.

The war begins when we get ready to plant. I'm the one who picks the vegetables, hand weeds the rows and crawls around on all fours getting the goodies off of the low growing plants. So, I feel I have a say in how they are planted. He wants to get as many rows as he can in the space. I want them far enough apart to till them after they get grown and not have to crawl through overlapping plants and weed filled rows to pick. I yell "further apart!!!" He moves the string marking the rows closer together. It's a wonder we don't plant in zig-zags instead of rows.

The little plants come through the ground and it looks beautiful! Hubby is out there tilling and making everything look like a model garden. Then it's hay time, hubby is busy and the plants get bigger. The weeds grow faster than the garden plants, so the nice neat garden starts to look like it has little trees growing up and down the rows. The big tiller that he insisted on buying because he can do a whole row with one trip is now too big to go through the rows without tilling up the plants. I can't use the monster tiller because it drags me through the rows like a bulldozer. The weeds start to grow with a gleeful vengeance. Soon the cucumbers are disappearing, the beans are growing in a green lawn of little weeds, the tomatoes are becoming a thicket,and the squash have formed a canopy over the eggplants.

Now, panic sets in. The only hope is a hoe and hand weeding. As soon as we get a shower and the ground softens a little we attack. Off we go pulling weeds, chopping out the rows and trying to find the cucumbers. I work with a will but I don't go quietly. Every weed I pull up is accompanied by muttered threats concerning close rows, tillers, husbands, and next year!! Finally a stalemate is reached. The garden plants can be found and the weeds are at least held a bay if not eliminated.

Then the temperature reaches 98 degrees and it's time to pick. We picked one and half rows last night and got two 7 gallon buckets of beans. These will be snapped, put into jars, pressured and cooled to create about 34 quarts jars of beans. I only have 4 rows of beans left to pick. By then the first rows will be producing beans again. We eat approximately 50 quarts of beans a year. You are beginning to see why I stand in the garden to keep him from plowing up more.

I'm beginning to consider the cost of green beans in the store reasonable and logical. At some point in the picking in the hot sunshine, with sweat dripping in my eyes, I also consider divorce or murder reasonable and logical. Fortunately, the satisfaction of seeing those jars of green beans ready for the family for the winter keep me from following that thought----at least this time!