As you can imagine, the real ordeal I face as my femur heals is being confined in home and watching the world go by outside my window.
I’ve got a few weeks to go, but I’m making progress on my walker with limited use of my broken leg.
Two weeks ago there was no limited use.
As I heal, the weather has allowed my wife to launch another garden in our back yard.
She’s given me regular reports as part of her excitement about the vegetables that will be part of our family fare.
MaLinda frequently mentions squash that lies in wait outside.
I suppose it’s odd that in my later years, my impression of some foods was formed as a boy and squash was not a meal that stirred my interest.
If I didn’t like it back then, the chef’s response was that I could go hungry.
But MaLinda has been on quite a tear about the tomatoes she planted.
There are now 22 varieties out there.
Tomatoes are good, but I am accustomed to the kind that are round and red.
Those different offerings include the biggest tomato of all, the beefsteak – perfect for summer sandwiches.
And there’s the sweet tasting Henderson Ponderosa, the ominous sounding Darkstar, the Very Crazy Yellow, and Black Beauty.
I do look forward to when these different tomatoes are on my plate.
I also welcome MaLinda’s enthusiasm about her garden.
I spent a good bit of my youth working on my parents’ gardens, but I was never smitten about the joy of growing.
When we lived in New Mexico, where my father published a newspaper, our residence was a 14-acre farm not far from the Rio Grande River.
The farm was devoted to rows and rows of apple trees and grape vines.
I actually liked living there and plucking an apple off a tree or pulling grapes from a vine.
The grapes produced a dry wine that didn’t taste well to my adolescent throat – I don’t much care for dry wines now for that matter.
Apple plucking time was arduous.
I didn’t chafe at that work as much as I did on the business end of a hoe going after weeds.
I really do appreciate food from the earth to put a fine point on what I wrote this go round.
I’ll hold my comments on squash however.