Mainly to pick peas- which I obviously know how to do. I thought I'd be ready to take care of the garden, to carry on now that dad is gone...
But it's a lot harder than I thought. There's too much I don't know how to do. And I don't know if I'll do a good job with the garden I've inherited.
And I missed dad more than ever while I was out there.
This little guy was doing his own work in the garden though:
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| Dad always loved watching honey bees forage. So seeing this little guy buzz around was a small comfort. |
But that bee couldn't help me any more than I can help myself. I'm lost without dad's knowledge- he was like a plant encyclopedia. And I'm fuckign terrified that I won't be able to keep the garden in good shape, that if dad could see me now he'd be disappointed.
The first time I found something I didn't know, I asked the gardeners over on reddit the other day what was this mold growing on dad's little cherry tree:
But nobody has told me what I'm supposed to do to help the tree. Dad would have known.
Are they something I should smoosh, or are they beneficial? Again... Dad would have known.
And I dug up one of dad's old recipes to cook them up for myself:
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| A redditor said this was "scale" |
And yesterday I went to pick the peas... I found these little bugs:
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| They are hard to see because the blend in almost perfectly. What are they? |
He taught me a lot in time we had, but there was so much more I would have liked to learn.
The garden used to be the place I'd find peace. And I felt a glimpse of that yesterday, while doing the stuff I know, I picked all these peas:
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| A pretty good harvest |
And I dug up one of dad's old recipes to cook them up for myself:
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| We didn't grow any broccoli so I had to use frozen... |
Shrimp stirfry with frozen broccoli and home grown peas- in a peanut soy sauce. It came out delicious.
Joe smelled the food cooking and came to dish some up- I told him no chance.
We got into an argument, and I told him, "You didn't lift one finger to help in the garden, and I know for a fact dad was disappointed. So you don't get to eat the fucking peas we grew!"
Well Joe looked really pissed, and told mom.
Mom said something completely idiotic like "Sure that's fair, Alex. But it goes both ways. If Joe can't eat what he didn't help grow, you can't eat what you didn't help buy. Where do you think that shrimp and broccoli came from?"
She told me if I couldn't share the peas, then we'd better throw the whole dish out. and that I was being an "asshole". I wanted to throw the whole dish in her face.
But obviously I couldn't throw away the peas dad and I worked so hard to grow. So I had to share them with that stupid fuck wad Joe. Mom had some too. And Susan tried them. She's the only one I would have willingly shared with, since she is too small to really be any help in the garden and therefor never made dad feel bad about it.
Either way i learned my fuckign lesson: Don't cook food from the garden when Joe and mom are home. It's not right for them to enjoy food from the garden when they've spent the last two years disappointing dad and contributing ZERO to the success of his garden.... It's basically disrespectful.
Fuck them both.
