For a few years now we've had a family reunion we call Farm Day at the beginning of August. Children ride the red 1941 Farm-All B tractor down the hill to the meadow with Uncle Don; adults sit in a circle of camp chairs in the maple tree shade next to the house and gab - or play badminton, ping pong or croquet; guys pull out guitars in a grass circle; and my brother Jim helps grill brats and burgers. However this year, instead of Farm Day, we'll welcome 150 of our friends and family for our daughter Lesley's Farm Day Wedding: three months from tomorrow.
THREE MONTHS FROM TOMORROW!
Don is fully in gear and has recruited farm hands to help clean up the beds. He only pays them chicken feed, but they are enthusiastic and hard working, though sometimes a tad lippy.
Too bad they can't weed out this grass in the herb bed. Oh well, Don will be digging it up anyway to plant a Three Sisters garden. The herbs, tulips, daffodils, lilies and irises - but hopefully not the persistent grass - will get transplanted to some other as yet un-dug bed. (Peter's the digger.)
Notice all the Don Don Don and they they they and busy busy busy? They - those plucky chickens - clucked at me as I lay around on the ground with my camera, "Woman, you are so lazy, look at these grapevines! Didn't you weed them last year? Look at you lying there making strange noises with that black box. [I make strange noises?] These grapes should have been pruned in March, what a mess! You're a pitiful farmer's wife." Khan brrraughed at them to shut up, or else. He knows who writes the checks.
I was slightly offended and felt guilty, but Bishop showed me how to ignore them as they go about their business. Thanks, Bish, you're a real pal.
The thing is, if I keep taking my cues from Bishop, and all I do is an approval here and there of Lesley's wedding shoes and the restaurant taste test for the rehearsal dinner (yum!), then poor Don will have to rely on these ladies, who I think can't landscape the yard or hold a paintbrush.
Awright, awright, you squawky hens, I'm up, I'm up.
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