The comics form part of my “must reading” in the daily paper. They’re entertaining, but, though the title implies humor, not always funny. The best ones provide a slice of real life.
For Better or Worse with its tales of the trials and tribulations of raising a toddler and a teenager at the same times as having a son in university and elderly parents at a distance always strikes a chord, as does Sally Forth, with its glimpses of a working woman trying to balance home,family and job. Then there’s Peanuts.
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Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
In recent days, Lucy has sent Rerun out to hoe the garden because “it’s good for him.” But when he comes in with a goodly pile of weeds which he has proudly dug up, she tells him she has changed her mind and she’s not going to have a garden after all.
I half sympathize with both of them.
When I first came to the farm, I was overwhelmed by many aspects of what I then understood to be the life of a “typical” farm wife. The most overwhelming was the garden, that large patch of bare brown earth that I was expected to make productive.
Both my husband and I learned valuable lessons that year, he that vegetables will grow in rows that are less than straight and I that big weeds are easier to pull than small ones. Both the garden and I have come a long way.
This is the time of year I call the dreaming season. With all the greyness surrounding us, we dream of warm weather, balmy breezes and color.
This longing for spring and the scents and sounds of spring is the reason seed catalogues start arriving in January and stores put out their seed displays and peat pellets and potting soil in February.
It leads to a lot of impulsive buying.
As usual, I was drawn this year. I am the proud possessor of a grocery bag full of vegetable and herb and flower seeds and more dahlia bulbs than I will ever need.
The bedding plants aren’t out yet, but when they are, I’ll be there trying desperately, and probably, if past years are anything to go by, not succeeding in being taken in by what I always find is a smorgasbord for the eyes.
Alas, though, at the moment the petunias and pansies of summer are just dreams of plantings to be.
And while the dreams may come true in the weeks to come, so too will the awakening to sore knees, broken nails, weeds and the flying, crawling pests of summer.
Just as there is a season to everything, so there is another side to paradise.
But not in the dreaming season.
