Oh, how it sucks to come back from vacation. Even if one doesn’t go anywhere and even if one actually works harder while on holiday, coming back and restarting the daily grind is a downer. So the past few weeks are done. “Vacation” is over and I’ve got to come up with something new to talk about, but I’m really not into it. Hopefully, as I apply fingers to QWERTY, things will fall back into place and the same-old, same-old will, once again, be the depressing rut it always has been.

That was basically how my conversation with Carl – of Carl and Lupe fame – started the other day at lunch at the Madison Diner here on lovely Bainbridge Island. It went downhill from there. He started whining about “relationship issues,” about “domestic tranquility,” about, well, item #3 may require a blog of its own so I’ll have to leave you hanging. I waxed philosophic about the state of the micro-farm, the ongoing battles with feckless deer, chomping gophers, and nibbling voles too numerous to count. I mean, sweet Jesus, the deer are coming up on the patio now – and knocking on the door.

Carl, being able to afford to drink in restaurants, was doing so, and, by the time we were wiping up ketchup with the over-crisp slivers of French fries that are always hiding in the pile, was pretty much blotto. I guess four pints of Honey Badger Limburger Stout, or whatever the hell oddly-named local micro-brew he was drinking, were enough to impair even Carl’s typically clear thinking. It was then I asked my poorly timed question.

“I don’t even know why the fuck I keep trying.”

Which I guess is more a statement than an actual question, but being so close to tears at that point, I was in no mood for any grammatical nit-picking.

Anyway, Carl looked at me over the rim of his nearly empty glass and, when he finally got his eyes to focus on me said, “James, my boy,” – I still haven’t gotten used to somebody younger than I am calling me “my boy” – “you do it because you’re getting something you need that you wouldn’t get if you weren’t doing it.” His voice grew quiet. “That’s the only reason we do anything.”

At which point Carl dropped the glass which bounced across the table splashing out the last few drops of beer. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he promptly smashed face-first onto the slices of red onion he had picked off his sandwich.

An hour later, after I had relieved him of his car keys, dragged him up onto his front porch and dumped him, unconscious, in the corner, I had some time to reflect on Carl’s wisdom. Yes! By god, he was right. Enough of this endless negativity. Enough of this poor-me-suffering-at-the-hands-of-an-unkind-destiny nonsense. Jobs, relationships, hobbies… whatever; the only thing keeping us in any activity or situation is that we’re getting something good out of it. Carl, in his drunken stupor, had somehow stumbled upon the wisdom of a sage.

It was time to turn over a new leaf.

Thus reinvigorated, I returned to the micro farm and decided to document the beauty and bounty that we had wrought with our unceasing digging and hoeing and planting and weeding and watering and digging and weeding and – well, you get the idea. Yes, it had been a lot of work, and here, just weeks before the first harvest, is a sample of what we have gotten for our efforts.

There are the rapidly-growing and just-about-ready-to-lay-eggs chickens.

There are the bees, still packing away honey and pollen for the winter, and maybe a bit for us.

There are flowers, oh, are there ever.

Poppies like we had never imagined with a backdrop of bachelor’s buttons and rhubarb.

The brilliant star of the veldt carpeting a border.

Massive sunflowers in white…

…and yellow.

Dahlias brilliant enough to bring shivers up your spine.

Virtual bushes of marigolds providing splashes of colors along with a scent to keep bugs away from the peas and artichokes growing nearby.

In the greenhouse, the tomatoes are coming along fine.

So is the corn.

There are pumpkins ripening in the garden,

winter squash,

and endless tons of zucchini. Really, you want any zuccinni, send me the postage and a return address.

I’d show you the potatoes, but they’re underground.

In the orchard the boughs hang heavy with apples.

The blueberry bushes are doing great but are here absent because I ate all the berries before I could frame the shot.

Yes, all-in-all it looks like there is the promise of a good harvest, and of better ones in the years to come. Despite the deer – barely kept away by the surprisingly effective sprinkler scarecrow, despite the gophers and voles and the dozens of traps set about the garden making it unsafe to walk out there after dark, and despite the ever encroaching weeds trying to take over the garden; after all the work we put into the micro-farm, I think we’re going to actually get something out of it.

Carl was right. Now I better go call Lupe and tell her where I hid his keys.