By ERNIE NEUFELD
Not being, in any bankable sense, a true son of the soil, I cannot logically account for the strong urge every spring to betake myself to the cultivated strip of earth in my back yard.
Urge? Not an overwhelming one. I believe mine once was compared to a dog giving perfunctory scratches with his hind legs after doing a naughty on the front lawn. An eons-old legacy, presumably, from the days the species had to tidy its den because there was no mistress or master to do it
Nevertheless, for about the past quarter-century, I have faithfully obeyed the call of an earlier need of the clan and seeded/planted the simpler vegetables each spring with the fond hope of garnering from imperfect dedication a few pailfuls of potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, beans (annual winners, as were chickweed and other unwanted prairie denizens) and an abundance of dillweed sprigs to add that extra flavor. I never made it with exotics like peas, corn or a few other ambitions that successfully challenged ability. On radishes I struck out consistently, although I believe last year I harvested a dozen scrawny rewards of good intentions.
\I have done better on volunteer growth. Once I discovered pretty red berries on a six-foot-high tree that had popped up on the property line among some other bushes. They were identified by a local expert as Nanking cherries and were quite tasty. On one occasion I found, after a week's trip, a little tree thriving in the middle of the lawn. It produced plums tastier than the wild plums common to prairie gardens.
Until a few years ago, I followed my vain but worthy efforts with a column, but gave up when results became disgustingly repetitive.
This spring, due to a change of domiciles, I have given up the garden, but browsing recently through vintage notes I came upon a gardening column begun but abandoned for reasons not explained. Some of my comments strike me as worth quoting, if not memorable:
"Looking down the other day - as a lord of the manor - to survey the vegetable garden that runs across my backyard and forms the property boundary, I spied a squirrel near one end of the soaker hose that runs the length of the six-foot strip.
"The soaker is made of black felt-like material, and the squirrel had his head down as he followed the thin green line that runs along the middle of the hose, apparently curious to see what sort of head must rest on or rise from the end of this snakelike creature.
"Well, that's one difference from bygone years. There was a time when the mere sighting of a squirrel in Weyburn was an occurrence worthy of note and comparison with other reported phenomena of kind. No more. Nowadays the little creatures are common sights anywhere in the community.
"And if that isn't enough to make this year's gardening different from past years, I cite the time I was on my haunches pulling weeds when I felt an object coming down on my shoulder with a plop. Either mistaking my arguably inanimate form for a lawn ornament or a familiar neighborhood scarecrow, a full-grown robin had landed on my shoulder. When I turned my head he quickly realized his understandable error and flew away in a panic."
(These delights I now and henceforth leave behind me.)
"Readers used to tell me that rather than take up vegetable gardening themselves, they simply read my annual column on how I had fared. That evidently gave them all the exposure they needed."
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