The Joy of Growing Things

There's a lot about me that screams farm girl (like, for instance, the fact that I grew up on a farm); however, I'm not one. I've never particularly liked the outdoors. I took horsebackriding lessongs only because my friends and family did and gave it up during my teen years for theater, field hockey, and bussing tables at a local restaurant. I've weeded intensely huge vegetable gardens, mucked out stalls, collected fresh chicken eggs, thrown hay bales...with the same disinterest any other child feel at making the bed or washing the dishes.

Now that my property has gone from being measured in acres to feet, my attitude towards outside work has changed. There are no longer chickens or horses, nothing so glorious, but the small plots of land I have to cultivate are loved and tended. I spend hours slaving over 2 x 12 feet of dirt, urging the soil to bring forth beans, herbs, tomatoes, peppers, and beauitful blooms. I check their progress every day, watching vacant spots produce tiny green shoots that seem to grow every time I turn my back. I keep a nervous eye on the areas that remain empty-- are they failures or late bloomers? Only time will tell.

So why the change of heart? It could be stubborness. After all, no one (besides myself) is making me weed and dig and mulch my weekends away. Now that it's not an assigned chore, it's more attractive. It could be the ownership. This is my land, growing my crops. I'm practically a pioneer out here in suburbia, dealing with the harsh conditions of shade and the occasional rabbit. Or it could just be that now, in my early adulthood, I can better appreciate delayed gratification: how the hours I put in now will, quite literally, bear fruit in the future.

Whatever the reason, I can't wait until June-- perhaps July-- to see it all happen.