Separation With a Little Less Anxiety

When you know you're leaving home for a week, is it crazy to seriously be considering a web cam for your garden?

I'm just askin'. Just kidding, but also just askin'. :)

We can't be in two places at once. Sometimes situations call for us to be away from our jobs or other responsibilities. This is why we have sick days, personal leave, vacation days, substitute teachers, and wonderful neighbors who water our gardens and promise to panic if they see a U-haul parked in our driveways.

You do all you can in order to be prepared to be absent for a span. Even if it's just one day, you clear off your desk, lay a writing utensil and paper pad at the ready, roll up the water hose, and store the fertilizer and gloves. So you may just happen to leave a cup of soapy water around the okra just in case a Japanese beetle roams by and decides to go for a swim. No one's begrudging you of that, but no matter your preparations to leave your garden, it still feels worse than dropping your dog off at the vet.

I'm not as gently neurotic as I was the first time I left the corner yard for the wedding in St. Louis. Then, things were new to me and I wasn't as secure in my garden. However, this time everything has fallen into place garden wise. The plan to have the high maintenance crops out of the garden by our trip has worked perfectly. The only things now producing are the tomatoes and peppers with a few melons lying around. The butternut squash and the bush beans may flower while we're gone, but everything else is in the seedling stage and those that do bloom can wait until we're home to harvest.

This trip, however, is different. We're going to California to visit my grandmother. She hasn't seen the children since the girl was three months old, and it's been-done time to go. I'm ecstatic, I'm thrilled, I'm giddy, I'm apprehensive, I'm nervous, I'm terrified.

It's a five hour plane ride. With a 5 and 2 yr old.

You can release that quick intake of breath you just took. Be grateful you're not sitting next to us.

Things will be the way they'll be. We'll get there. We'll get back. I'm not above a small shot of benadryl; I've bought suckers to stop up the mouths of the youngin's and chocolate to sooth the demeanors of our fellow passengers.

Yes, we'll get there. We've needed to get there for some time now.

See y'all in about a week. Sweet gardening dreams.