Comments on THE GOVERNMENTS HAVE MADE ME A CRIMINAL

     Each spring I begin making preparations for my two gardens. I compost, making my own rich, dark soil. My broccoli, potato, strawberry and cabbage garden resides in my front yard, visible from the living room window, and the road. My other garden resides elsewhere. Very other and very elsewhere, if you get my drift. Carefully preserved legacy seeds are as well as is possible, isolated far from stray pollen that would degrade what has taken me years of subjective hard work, keeping my strain from all other low-grade genetic influences. Several times the thought that cross-polination should add beneficial traits, has made it necessary for me to discard years-long efforts, and begin again from scratch. Preserving purity of your own strain, should be one's only goal.

     That said, my successes have made my friends and me, eagerly await each harvest season, even knowing that winter is fast approaching, building up speed, rolling downhill with a tailwind. Winter is an extremely trying time in Michigan, with spring being the only reward for having survived it. I have never had a so successful reward for my efforts, as to carry me past New Years Day.  Still these efforts have usually resulted in gloriously satisfying results. I’m never even tempted to part with any of my crop, regardless of friendships, given the times in which we live, and my dependably meager results. Sharing with friends, or really spectacular results would eventually invite catastrophe, into my life.

     Thieves, including my own son, and various neighbors, have tried to follow me or find and follow any paths, they think that I might have made, to reap the results of my sweat and risk. Even close friends cannot resist talking about that which should never be mentioned aloud.

      Delicious secrets demand to be shared, I guess. Two people can only share secrets, providing that one of them has died. To succeed, leading to a comparitive bounty, is very sweet indeed.

      Carrying VERY heavy pails-full of dirt, seedlings, shovels, water, etc. in the most mosquito infested and sweltering times of the year, isn’t something that appeals to these lazy, larcenous low-lifes. It is so gratifying to defeat their plans by making better plans of my own. The most important thing one can do is to make no paths. Even a blind idiot can follow a path, to it’s end.

      Looking over this composition, checking it for spelling errors, run-on sentences, etc. it occurred to me that some readers might think that I’m talking about something other than tomatoes and sweet corn. For some reason, these are very sought after commodities in our area. Sorry if I failed to make that clear.

              Guy