Stuff & Nonsense by Celeste Parsons: The Tyranny of the Garden

The Tyranny of the Garden

This is the season that I refer to as "The Tyranny of the Garden."  Although things are somewhat late at our house, probably due to the lack of rain, there is now an assortment of produce in the vegetable garden which, if not picked when it is ready, will rapidly become inedible. So, at least every other day, I go out with my picking basket as I did today and return with okra pods, a carrot or two, green beans, lima beans, black-eyed peas, golden zucchini, and scores of tomatoes. As I sat on my couch shelling the limas and black-eyed peas, I watched a hummingbird at the feeder which had decided today (for the first time all summer) to play Keep Away, perching on the wire from which the feeder hangs and chasing off all other hummers who tried to come get a drink. 

I mused about the contrast between the urgency of dealing with the veggies and the waiting for news about a dear friend who is finally losing a lengthy battle with cancer. In the liminal space between "Gotta do it now" and "Can't do anything now," the other activities of life--preparing meals, bicycling, reading--seem somehow unreal. I wonder if the hummingbird is feeling something like that tension in his tiny brain, something between the frantic activity, now over, of raising a brood and the need to fly south. "Not time yet . . . but I need to be ready . . . I'll just guard this food supply and wait."

It's helpful to have something to keep yourself busy.

Celeste Parsons lives in a log house built on a former dairy farm with her husband Jim, her Westie dog, Spook, and a revolving population of deer, turkeys, chipmunks, hummingbirds, and other wildlife. She has written poems, plays, technical documentation, and newspaper articles since childhood, and is the editor of Nelsonville from A to Z. Her first children's book, Wait Until I Grow Up!, released in 2021. Celeste is the also the author of Two on Two Wheels: Adventuring on a Bicycle, released in 2024.