Planting for the Future......

We planted our vegetable garden yesterday.

When life tosses nothing but chaos your way, keeping perspective becomes a moment-by-moment adventure.  Planning ahead for events such as camping, vacations, and even dental visits becomes as predictable as shooting craps.  Sometimes you win, usually you lose.  Flexibility is the only gift you're given to turn a loss into a win. 

Beans, peas, carrots, radishes, tomatoes, lettuce.

Babygirl is scheduled to see the dentist today.  Keeping up with this, and thereby preventing dental infections, is very important for transplant patients.  I came home yesterday and listened to phone messages, and there was the reminder.  Her appointment is at noon.  She needs to take antibiotics to protect the new kidney an hour before her appointment.  And she's feeling well enough to go to school.

Babygirl planted all the herb plants herself.

Dental appointments are Hubby's job.  And Hubby is in Florida tending to his sister, as he should be.  And I, keeper of the Master Calendar, did NOT have this appointment in my book (although to be completely truthful, I didn't even LOOK at my calendar until I got the phone message).  I don't have her antibiotics on hand.  And even if I cancelled an hours' worth of patients, I'd still have to figure out how to get those called in, picked up, and inside of Babygirl by 11 AM.  And then I'd have to figure out how to get from one end of town after her appointment to the other end for MY appointment with my neurologist, Mom's appointment with the pacemaker clinic, and Mom's appointment with her doctor.

We're trying broccoli this year.

Looking at an already close-to-impossible scedule, and considering adding another three places I'd need to be for that one extra?  No can do. 

Peppers.  Zuchini.  Summer squash.

I figure if I've only dropped one ball out of that massive juggle I'm doing okay.  But the cause of the missed appointment is that someone far away broke a leg.  How do we explain that? 

We planted marigolds to help keep the bunnies away.

There is no real way to plan for any future event.  We can only keep moving and hope that things run as smoothly as possible.

We still have a little space.  Maybe one more tomato plant?

Gardens and life are the same.  You plant, you plan, you work and weed and you hope that in the end you have something to show for your troubles.  You never know about rain, and hail;  you can't predict pests and weeds.  You just have to take it on faith that despite the storms, something beautiful is coming.  There's nothing better than a salad from the garden even if the bunny runs off with some of the produce.  And there's nothing better than my family, even if illness and pain sneak away with some of our moments.

We still have more space.  More room to plant and grow.  And time to weed out the things that crowd us,  time to deal with the things that plague us.  Gardens remind us that not everything has instant results, that some of our best gifts take time, and that we need to adjust our expectations to allow for bad weather. 

DeeDee