Starts with K

We’re rapidly approaching the days when home gardeners proudly display the fruits – and vegetables – of their labor.

It is the only time I feel a bit envious, but I don’t have to try too hard to move past it.

I buy potted flowers, water them semi-regularly all summer, then compost them in the fall. The next spring, the process repeats.

But a garden-garden? Absolutely not.

When my siblings and I were growing up in Iowa, my parents had a big garden. I’m talking about half-a-city-block big.

My dad did the tilling of the garden in the spring and planted the potatoes.

The rest of the work, my friends, was all child labor – and there was a lot of it.

The straight rows of beans, peas, radishes and onions? The cut-down milk cartons to protect tender tomato plants? The hours of daily weeding? The harvest? Alllllll us.

There were four of us kids, but by the time I reached an age to be of substantial help, my oldest brother was aging out. My next-oldest brother followed a year later. True geniuses, they realized that digging actual wells for farmers was an easier – not to mention better-paying – way of spending their summers.

That left my sister and me, ages 11 and 7, respectively, to care for that giant garden. My parents both worked full time, was the reasoning, so why wouldn’t it fall to us?

Well, for one thing, we were little kids. For another, it wasn’t our idea to have the garden. And finally, it was a huge responsibility.

Additionally: SPF who? My sister has lovely dark coloring, hair and eyes. I had strawberry-blonde hair, blue eyes and a zillion freckles. If you listened closely, you could hear my back and arms sizzling as we worked.

And here’s the other thing: When they talked about the garden, or people saw it, or we brought some homegrown dish to a potluck, my parents literally preened.

“But who weeds that huge thing?” people asked.

“Oh, we make the kids help,” my mom would answer airily, waving a dismissive hand, as if we were simply backup.

As infuriating as all of that hot, miserable work was, I can honestly say that I enjoyed BLTs with lettuce and tomatoes that I had picked hours, if not minutes, earlier.

I loved fresh corn on the cob, letting the melted butter drip down my arms as I ate.

A scoop of cucumbers and onions in cream sauce was the best side dish.

Shelling peas on the back porch in the evenings was also rewarding; the little ping-ping-ping as they hit the metal bowl becoming almost a lullaby. Those sweet peas were also as close to candy as my mom would let us get.

Still, every summer, I vowed to myself that when I grew up, I would never have a garden.

And so it went, for almost a decade. By then, my sister had also left home, leaving me alone to work in that garden for the final three years. My dad grudgingly picked up some of the slack.

The end came one August afternoon when I was about 16. My mom called from work, and asked me to pick some onions for the meatloaf she had planned for dinner.

Per the garden rules, I removed my sandals to walk down the row, looking for a good-sized onion. The green tops were drooping, as happens later in the season.

I spotted a good one – and reached for it. Simultaneously, two things happened: I stepped on a snake, which slithered out from under my bare foot, and I grabbed a snake that had camouflaged itself nicely among the onion tops.

It was, appropriately enough, a smooth green snake. The one I stepped on was likely a garter snake.

I must emphasize that none of this was their fault. They were living and doing what snakes do, as was I – which at that point was running to the house as if my hair were on fire, crying and screaming.

My parents looked equal parts amused and horrified as I related the story, but they knew one thing for sure: I would never help in the garden again.

So it remains. And to this day, I have never had another bite of meatloaf.