65 Year Old Amateur

Sixty-four, ten and three quarter months. And counting.

I have been in Oklahoma the majority of my life and have been planting and maintaining a garden for the last five years. I know, I started old and it takes a certain amount of "born in" talent (said loosely) and being the son of a gardener to even consider making a garden, tending it, shaking the okra plants and yelling at the tomatos to grow, and not being intimidated by the neighbors listening and looking sideways at you.

Planting some things that you don't know how they work or figuring out that you have male and female parts of a plant or plants that typically don't communicate or try their best to ring out with colored flowers and fair not a whisp of time together, hence a fence full of vines, no production. Something about this seems like other stories, but I'll move on.

There are plenty of tomatoes this year, ninety-four at last count on eleven plants. I started with twelve but a misplaced foot and falling over the cage sort of wiped that twelfth one off the garden map. They took their time turning red, and one tomato got bigger and bigger and l stayed away because is was green, and then it changed to yellow. Then it became the diameter of a coffee saucer and my mind clicked and I looked at the bottom of the plant and the sign was buried in three inches of dirt showed a large YELLOW tomato pictured. The half that was eaten was wonderful and the other half was rotted. You learn from your mistakes. That and being color blind.

There is a lot of okra, because while people I respect and admire have since told me that they plant one or two plants and I planted 72 plants in three rows. I wanted plenty of okra, and have eaten okra or frozen okra, or given away okra since every plant started producing. A lot.

There are at least 21 recipes for okra, all of them work, and I have become quite adept at making them, each one. Picking, frying, boiling, etc....

The squash plants are big but not producing, and the one watermelon plant has become about ten-feet long and is blooming but nothing is happening.

Gardening is not so bad, it just takes time, effort, sweat, bugs, mud, heat of the day, other folk telling you what you do wrong, or how it could be better, and finding out they don't grow one themselves.

I think I have learned a lot, now I must get to canning .....

Ralph Peck

Gardening the Back Yard

Claremore, Ok