husband & wife

i find weeding a garden to be relaxing. it's mostly quiet. i'm in the middle of dirt, seeing things i don't usually see (bugs, bunnies, worms, amelia peeing in the yard--wait, i see that a lot...). or maybe it's because i grew up being required at times to weed an entirely large row or two from the veggie garden, my dad always reminding us 'the best time to pull weeds is in the early morning'. i think he was just trying to get our butts out of bed.

really, i learned so many things from growing up in the country. sometimes living on a semi-working farm, with a grandpa who farms ACRES & acres & acres, with a grandma who had a plentiful garden & even more plentiful canning skills...my dad who always planted half our yard in veggies & fruits. 

switch to me now, living in the suburbs of columbus. we have a decent garden set up, nothing too intense at this point (not half our yard, wink to my dad). so wes & i were out viewing our concord grape vine the other evening--something weird is happening--they're turning black & falling off, unripe & dead. (thoughts? helpful hints?) as we were checking them out, wes & i smelled something awful. 

immediately, i said: smells like a small dead animal.

wes just looks at me like i'm odd & mentions something about dog poop. i let it go, but i thought, "it DOES smell like a small, decomposing animal". *humph*

fast forward a few days. we had a hard rain that morning, so later in the day, after the nannied baby boy had left & wes was home, i went out to weed the veggie garden. because really, the best time to pull weeds is after a rain like this, when the ground is no longer muddy, when i'm able to pull up the entire weed, root & all, with just one tug at the base.

wes joins me, after i handed him his weeding gloves & said something like: you plant them, you help weed them *smile*. we pull in silence for awhile. then i look over at his pile & see huge clumps of dirt hanging onto the roots...

understand that i did not have to teach wes how to do a load of laundry. or how to cook or clean or even plant flowers & veggies. so i just find it humorous that this is what i'm teaching him: how to pull a weed without leaving the root in, while leaving all the dirt.

as we joked about that & then went back to doing our own thing (i had to turn my back to him so i wouldn't keep reminding him how to do this or that more, better--ugh, to me). anyway, wes broke the silence with this 'my wife rocks' moment:

wes: you know i found a dead chipmunk in the 5 gallon bucket the other day; it drowned in rainwater.  

me: by the grapes?

wes: yes, it was what we smelled the other night.blech!

me: so...did you happen to think to yourself, my wife was right? i'llbedamned.

wes: the things you learned growing up a country girl. the things you know are weird (then later that day: my wife can spot "redneck" better than i can)

i was hardly a "country" girl, anyway. but if it makes me right...