8:33pm Sunday night
Phone rings. Loud noise (combine)
in background.
“You should be out here taking
pictures of this moon!”
I have just removed the battery
from my camera and plugged it into the wall to recharge. I stuff a beer into
each pocket, grab my cellphone and car keys, pull on a warm jacket and head for
the driveway. The moon is hanging over the end of it and I snap a few photos
with my cellphone before retreating to Little Green, out of the wind and cold.
I drive over to Godhes’ yard and get Scott’s camera off the dash of his truck,
then drive back up our road and pull onto the approach leading to the field
where there are two sets of headlights. One is combining and the other is following behind with the baler. I turn off Little Green’s lights and engine
and strike out across the stubble.
Ah, the scent of it! It’s lovely
out there. I stretch my leg to step over wide swaths of oats without disturbing them,
and when I get to the combine, it stops and Scott climbs down. I hand him his
camera and a beer, and back onto the machine he goes. I make my way along the
swaths till reaching Bruce pulling the baler, and hand him a beer when he opens
the side door to see what I want.
“That should’ve been supper,” I
think, walking back to the warmth. “They must be hungry.”
Then it’s home again. Damn, it’s
cold out there! Orange moon or no.
I stop at the quonset and take some
of Laurel’s sausages from the deep freeze, and put them in a pan to begin
slowly thawing and frying when I get back in the house. I’ve no idea how long
Scott will be in the field, but he’ll be hungry when he comes in.
It’s not long; he’s back in less
than an hour.
Didn’t walk today. Was cold and
windy. I had dishes to do. And I dug up perennials and took them to Bev’s in
Kuroki and helped her plant them. Took a bottle of Gunnar and Melissa’s red
wine (came home with a case of it. What was I thinking? I should've bought two) and had a glass with Bev and Paul. Home shortly before six.
Bev noted that there are more weeds here than in Ontario (also more insects). I sang the praises of my horseshoe hoe, the answer to everything weedy, like ski pants are to winter. A few passes in the spring while the weeds are just seedlings, and in my garden they aren't unmanageable. I am not an ambitious gardener; I like to do just what I want to do and not more, just when I want and not when I don't, so low maintenance is key.
"What does it look like?" they wanted to know.
I have laid it across a bucket of still-flowering pansies.
If anyone sees a hoe like this for sale, please let me know where! I have found similar hoes but none the same width as this one, and that is what I want. I'll need a new one someday and they'd make perfect gifts for gardening friends.
The horizontal metal is about six inches wide. The hoes I see on the hardware store walls are half the width. They may work as well, but take twice as long to cover the same area. The wide one, mine, can be tipped on a diagonal to get into tight "corners" so there is no advantage to the narrower hoe, that I can see.
