Growing Food: The Swan Song (and a Story)

Our forecast is calling for three nights of hard freeze this weekend, in the mid-20s. That means that Friday will be the day I do all the final harvesting in the garden. These last couple of weeks have been key in letting the tomatoes at least start getting ripe, so that I can bring them in green and they can finish ripening in the house. 

They're not as good this way as they would be if they had ripened on the plants, but this year, I'm definitely taking what I can get.

I will be very interested to see if this watermelon is any good.

And now, unrelated to my garden, I just have to share with you a very funny story.

One of the things I do in my job at the school is tutoring high school English students that are in our online program. I do this by meeting with them on Zoom. One of my students had told me he would be working with his neighbor this week, gathering cattle for shipping. He thought he might be done in time for his meeting, though, so I wasn't too surprised to see him join at his scheduled time.

I was kind of surprised when I admitted him to the meeting and saw bright blue sky behind him. I was even more surprised by the exchange that followed.

"Hi, Kai. I can see you're still working."

"Yes, ma'am."* 

Upon my noticing that he also seemed to be moving . . .

"Wait. Kai, are you on your horse right now?"

"Yes, ma'am." At this he turns his phone so I can see his horse's head. 

"Oh. What's his name?"

"Gucci."

"Like the fashion designer?"

"Yes, ma'am." 

So many unexpected things happened in that two minutes.

Needless to say, we did not do his lesson. The whole time he was talking to me, his head was swiveling around, quite clearly keeping track of the cattle he was moving while he was on his phone. 

It was incredibly funny, and was definitely the highlight of my day. A real "only here" kind of moment.

* This kid ALWAYS says "ma'am," as do many of the kids here. It's drilled into them from birth.