Marriage & Compromise

David's been patient with me these last four years. I can get a little too ambitious with garden plans ("Let's grow 17 different types of yellow tomatoes and have a huge tasting contest with the neighbors!"), which is fine (and, he admits, exciting to a degree), but I don't have the organizational skills to implement consistently my grandiose plans.

So we'll have the 17 tomato plants, but I'll lose all the little stick label-things marking the pots, and we have to plant them willy-nilly and guess at their names. Or we'll have nine bean plants but I'll get occupied and forget to cook them for a week and they'll have to be thrown out. Or we'll plant them so close that everything gets contaminated with some claustrophobic mold.

I also like to give away our bounty to friends, but he's the one weeding and picking suckers and mowing, mostly, so he gets the grunt work and -- because I am the one handing out the results or cooking them -- I get more of the glory.

I rarely admit my (best-laid) plans gang aft algey, but he knows he's right.

But here, publicly, on this here blog, I will capitulate to his sober and sensible plans, forswearing my intractable imagination, and will choose fewer varieties, work with more precision and attention, and plant the seedlings a little farther apart.

But...um, I'll claim a little spot down in the way-back-yard for my "experimental garden."

Signed, digitally,
Camille Napier Bernstein
(stubborn to the last)