The Garden of Weedin’

I am about to enjoy my $500 strawberry. You might ask, “What idiot would pay $500 for one strawberry?”

Well let me tell you, if you looked high and low you wouldn’t probably find more than a handful of people dumb enough to pay $500 for one strawberry, but if you come to my house, knock on the door, and ask, I will be happy to answer that question.

And technically, I only get half of the strawberry because my too-kind-and-loving wife has dibs on the other half.

This might look like a regular strawberry to most people. In size, shape, and color it might barely be average, but to me it is the fruit of my labor and I am willing to offer way more money than any sane person would offer for a strawberry.

But it is more than a strawberry. It represents all we are about as a species commanded to make this land bountiful and productive.

I don’t have much of a memory anymore, but I read in the Good Book a story about this here first couple that done got themselves kicked out of some fancy garden where everything was free for the taking – better than Mulestien’s Nursery, I hear.

But some time ago, way before my time, we got kicked out of this Garden of Eden and were given the Garden of Weedin’ to help us build character and see if indeed we could feed ourselves by the fruit of our labor.

Well, I guess I answered that little experiment: we failed miserably here at my Cave.

There was so little to eat, the grasshoppers and Mormon crickets left my garden. They packed up and went to the neighbor’s yard, and they don’t even have a garden.

My too-kind-and-loving wife has been reminding me since we built this house that we should be more self-sufficient and that we needed a garden spot.

Well, with the COVID pandemic panic, apocalypse, earthquakes, and killer bees, I figured I better be able to feed myself, so I finally gave in and spent serious good money to buy topsoil, fencing, manure (yup, you heard correctly – I paid for horse manure and the privilege of shoveling it), PVC pipe, sprinklers, razor wire, and alarm bells to keep the deer out.

I had to buy topsoil because the Good Book said I was supposed to build my house upon a rock; which I did. Just ask Paul; he dug the hole for the basement.

He said, “There ain’t a wheelbarrow full of dirt on this entire hill you are going to call home, and I lost three of my fillings banging around trying to dig this #%!$#&^* basement.”

To his credit he really only said, “#%!$#&^.” I added the “*” to make it “#%!$#&^*” because it made a better story.

Up to this point in my life, if my too-kind-and-loving wife wanted something green in our yard, I poured green cement or spray painted my yellow grass a tasteful avocado green.

I offered to install some astro-turf. I did this because we can’t grow anything.

You probably think I’m exaggerating, but honestly, we could kill silk plants.

We finally put up a few metal sunflowers, but they too fell over. I don’t know why.

I have migrant blood in my veins. I’m supposed to be able to grow things and harvest vegetables and chili peppers, but apparently it has skipped a generation.

I have one strawberry and a radish. My zucchini plant isn’t making zucchinis… who can’t grow a freakin’ zucchini? Really?

So I have been working in the freakin’ hot sun every day for two months listening to Hamilton over and over and channeling my frustration into rap-verse…

“This is a story of My Garden of Eden. It’s mo’ like a Garden of Weedin’, and it won’t be feedin’ me ’cause it’s needin’ some more seedin’, leading me to deedin’ this here pile of rocks and weeds, so I won’t be beatin’ my head against the wall, in the fall, when all I got for my one shot is one radish and a strawberry.

“Yo, ain’t it so, if you sew, and you hoe, something should grow.Whadda you got? You ought to have something to show for all the dough, and I ain’t doin’ this no mo’.

“I gotta go ’cause I took my one shot, and one strawberry is all I got!”

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