Hailstorm Hiccough

When Dustin and I first started dating, he mentioned that he put out a garden every year.  He's a pretty plain eater, so it basically only consisted of tomatoes, green beans and potatoes.  I added a bit of variety to his garden this year with popcorn, zucchini, cucumbers, radishes and peas.  It has been doing very well and we have been enjoying quite a few goodies so far this season.

I haven't been in a garden since I was a kid.  Every year Donna and Errol would put in a huge garden and share many of their homegrown goods.  I can remember helping plant the potatoes and beans.  Errol would give us short sticks to place in between seeds so we wouldn't over or under plant each row.  We'd help water, weed and harvest.  It was such a huge accomplishment when we'd dig up a giant carrot and Donna would exclaim over it.  There's only a handful of moments where I have smiled as big as I did in those moments of glory!

Donna would can like crazy about this time of the year.  She didn't see any sense of running the air conditioner when the kitchen was already so hot, so we all but boiled during canning season!  I am really now learning how to can because although I was there, I was just a kid and only interested in peeling the skins of tomatoes and not worried about slicing or mashing or canning.  I can still practically feel the stickiness of my hot sweaty skin on those days!

Errol would be out there every day without fail.  He would hoe and weed, water and harvest.  That garden had the straightest rows of any garden I have seen.  About every year he would try to grow something new.  He even tried his hand at grapes for a while.

This year I have almost cried bittersweet tears fairly often as we've worked in our garden.  Dustin reminds me a lot of Errol with the way he gardens.  He's tried so hard to make it a bountiful garden and to be able to share our harvest with our families.

The other night there was a hailstorm.  He told me our garden looked rough.  I went and saw it and my throat caught.  It's so hard to see something you've worked so hard at become green shreds overnight.  All the tomatoes have nicks and the plants have broken branches.  Some of the popcorn fell.  The zucchini got nicked pretty bad.  We were both bummed about this.

"At least we still have the potatoes."

"You always see the positive side of things, Katie."

It's a little disheartening to see our garden trying to come back to life after a pounding like a hailstorm, but it just has to, that's what it's made to do.  It's made to keep living.  Just like in our lives, we get hit with the hailstorms of life.  We need to come back and keep on living.