~CHRISTIAN WOMAN MAGAZINE

~MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL             

                                                            
~OSHKOSH NORTHWESTERN       

~CHRISTIAN FAMILY MAGAZINE

 ~MARKETPLACE MAGAZINE

 ~JANESVILLE GAZETTE                                        
 
 ~DUNCANVILLE SUBURBAN
 
~MENOMINEE HERALD-JOURNAL

     Summer is made for iced tea and reading for pleasure.  So it behooves me that some women think they should spend it on their knees, in the dirt, picking worms off of mushy melons. Vegetable gardening--I just don’t get it!

     I've only canned vegetables once in my married life.  It was something I had to get out of my system.   I was peer-pressured into it by friends who acted like I was a kook for not canning, that I wasn't a real woman if I had not stood over a pressure cooker listening for that little thingy on top to jiggle.  That no way could I love my children, if I had not had lids to ping on my counter tops.

     My canning counterparts have rows of green beans, tomatoes, pickles and what looks like to me, small body parts of alien creatures on their pantry shelves.   They show them to me like trophies and dare me to sneer at their womanhood.  Their pickled beets are sacred and they think their zucchini relish makes them immortal.

    So I tried it.  I planted.  I hoed.  I weeded.  I watered.  I weeded.  I watered.  Then one day as I walked out to the garden, it happened!  I was greeted by little, bitty green things peeking out at me.  I had given birth to a garden!  It was a proud moment.  Of course all the seed signs had blown away and I had no idea what those little green things were.  But who cared.  I had images of a dinner table full of fresh cooked veggies that I had nurtured with my own hands.

    The next few weeks got even more exciting.  It was like my green babies were taking their first steps, saying their first words, and getting their first teeth.  It was all one big, green, Kodak moment.

    And then I began to notice something-- I wasn’t having much fun.  While my kids beckoned me to come play, I had to instead tie up broccoli leaves, or thin out onions, or stake up tomatoes.

    The evening walks with my husband had to stop because any gardener worth her calloused hands knows after the sun goes down is the best time to water and weed. We canceled our much-anticipated vacation because the green beans had to be canned that week.  And the zucchini had to be relished the next week.  And I didn't have a windowsill that didn't have an army of tomatoes lined on it oozing tomato goop.  And if I put one more green onion in anything or serve one more pool-size salad, my whole family had threaten to stuff me into a canning jar.

     Then it dawned on me.   My back hurt.  My nose was practically burnt off and not one person in my family particularly liked green beans.  I know you can put zucchini in anything.  And I did.  But when my sons started hiding zucchini under their beds and dressing them up and passing them off as neighborhood children--I knew I was teetering on the edge and dangerously close to being one pea short of a pod.

    Gardening and canning didn't make me more of a woman; it made me a prisoner of the soil.  I missed my family.  I missed Big Macs.  Who can rationalize going out for fast food if you're constantly surrounded by green things that are good for you?

    I had recurring nightmares about my pressure cooker exploding and burning down the whole city, with me being carted off to jail screaming something about botulism.  But the last straw was the night I woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming I cut off my husband's head.  Alas, I mistook it for cabbage.

 
    I invited the neighborhood, my church, even passing buses into my garden of death to pick at will.  "Take it all," I pleaded!  I gave tomatoes as wedding presents and baby gifts.  And when the last veg was plucked, my family celebrated by digging up every twig and vine and making a huge bonfire.  We roasted marshmallows and told ghost stories about man-eating waxed beans.

    It's over.  And in time, my family may forgive me for the green bean cookies and beet pancakes.  Gardening may be the center of the universe for some.  But I would like to go on record as stating: Please pass the iced tea and could you move a little to the left--you make great shade.