The Barrel Garden

In rows of threes, ten half-barrels line the driveway.  When filling them with loads of sand, clay, manure and black earth was more than a one day job.  We planted beans, zucchini, carrots, pumpkins, egg plants, and even have one herb barrel.  The ornate iron sides of a gazebo that lost its top in the wind were dragged up to the barrels.  When I left Bonnie was going to prop the ironwork up so that the beans could crawl up its sides.  David and she got that done, but when it came to weeding they couldn’t tell which of the plants were the beans and which were weeds, so she took 5 samples down to Glen’s house so he could identify them for her.

“I will show you how to tell,” he said, “by observing in nature”.  Glen took Bonnie over to Wyona’s garden and showed her that every sample Bonnie had brought to him, was growing there – weeds get away on people who are not living on the land, as well as on those of us who plant nothing in the barrels.  Now knowing that she had built the trellis around a barrel of weeds, she moved the ironworks over one barrel.

“Are you tying your beans up,” a friend asked her, “they are growing so well”.

“No, I didn’t have to tie them up.  My job was just to find the barrel that the beans were in.”