Amanda didn’t hesitate when our son Joe and daughter-in-law Michelle invited her to fly to CA to take care of our grandsons so they could enjoy a weekend getaway. Yes, flying 2,000 miles there and 2,000 miles back to serve as a babysitter for three days is wildly extravagant, but that’s sort of what grandmothers do.
And Amanda knew that the garden wouldn’t be neglected in her absence because I would be here to take care of it. She left me instructions, for example, to pick the okra, pick the beans and peas, and check on the peppers from time to time.
I messed up. I allowed my focus to be diverted to other things; nobody paid attention to the garden for eight days. Today’s podcast is a blow-by-blow description of the result. Not pretty. The beans and peas may be usable as seed but aren’t fit to eat. The cucumbers probably need to be pulled, although that would have been the case even with daily attention. Rule #1 for okra is to “keep it well-picked,” and my failure to do so has allowed some of the plants to collapse under the weight of the giant pods that resulted. The bright spot is the peppers, where my neglect of some peppers Amanda would have pulled while green has allowed them to turn a gorgeous red in the autumn sunshine.
Listen – 17:25
This pod on Amanda’s okra measures 14 1/2 inches and is pretty much worthless for anything but saving its seed. I’ve been bad.