ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 9, 1996 TAG: 9609100096
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ben Beagle
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
We didn't have a garden this year, and I kind of missed being in agriculture again.
I like putting on my weather-seamed face and looking to the west and saying things like: "Martha, if we don't get rain soon, the cucumbers are goners." I always thought I'd make a good television interview wearing my John Deere cap with the gold braid on the bill.
This summer we've had more rain than at any time since Thomas Jefferson invented the tomato, which is to say we picked a fine time to get out of gardening.
There has always been something of great purity and cleanness of spirit about working in the dirt. I feel that way about it despite the fact that I would rather be forced to listen to an hour of Pat Boone oldies than pull weeds or pick beans.
I remember the heartbreak of failed crops and how, sometimes, you couldn't even grow a beet - which my cat Judy can do if you till the ground for her.
I remember the year the wind knocked down the corn crop. Twelve good stalks down in the bottom land that had little green nubs on them with the silk too green to smoke yet. I remember peas and potatoes and peppers that embarrassed us so much we hid them from the neighbors.
I know how it feels to plant watermelons and get loathsome things that look, and taste, like green hand grenades.
I know the agony of bottom rot on the tomatoes and of harvesting carrots about the size of Shirley Temple's index finger in 1936.
Still, I miss the challenge of being in agribusiness, and yet I can plainly see that not having to worry about crops has taken a lot of stress out of my life this summer.
The other morning I had the time to catch this movie in which Kim Basinger did a number of amazing things that had little to do with gardening. Back in the old days, I'd have been trying to tie giant, mutated, tomato-less plants to their stakes.
I no longer have to take part in conversations at the barber shop about how tomatoes don't ripen the way they used to; or write down instructions for avoiding cutworms and bottom rot.
And yet, it doesn't give you the same kind of feeling of a thing well done when you buy $2.99 worth of home-grown tomatoes from someone who doesn't know the meaning of bottom rot.
You just don't feel like washing them and polishing them and saying:
"Look at these beauties, Thelma. The true bounty of the soil."
LENGTH: Medium: 52 linesby CNB