Sal and I went out yesterday and pulled some crab traps.  Got skunked.  So, we dropped them in a new place and went fishin’ instead.  Sal doesn’t like fishin’ much with lots of ‘eeewwwwwws’  and shrieks and screams if there is a fish flipping about and it needs bonking or hook removal.  Sometimes she is a bit of a girly-girl.  Even equipped as I am with the wizened testicles of a septuagenarian, I can still cut, de-hook, bonk and skin a fish without so much as a whiff of guilt.  Men are just brutes.  Brutey-brutes.  

But all that changed yesterday.  Well, for her, anyway.  She caught a good sized ling.  And it put up a good fight.  And the ‘eeeeewwws’ changed to ‘OH my GAWDs’ and ‘Hollllleeeeeeee!!!!!’  She yelled, “I am hooked!”

I said, “I’ll get the pliers.  Don’t move!”

She said, “No, I am not hook-hooked.  I am just now really INTO fishin’ now….it’s way more fun if you actually catch one!”  

Mind you, she didn’t get too all manly on me when it came to cutting it up.  “Hey!  You have the cajones.  Use ’em, boy!” 

The good part of this story (if there is one) is that Sal can now fish, catch and, I am hoping someday, will be able kill and clean dinner sometime.  The bad part is that more and more I am doing the dusting, dishes and cooking…..clearly the world is in turmoil and we have a hormonal imbalance happening.  I am gonna ask my doctor for a pill.

Part two of the day was spent ‘gardening’.  I shoveled dirt, Sal provided supervision.  We have three raised planter boxes and a greenhouse.  Maybe say, 200 square feet of cultivation area…?  And here it is now bright and sunny and we have nothing but some old spring onion ‘volunteers’ growing.  It is time to get the garden in gear.

I have a strange relationship with gardens.  They tend to commit suicide under my watch.  Even the worms leave!  And, since the plants are not edible at that early stage, I do not really care all that much.  Not a lotta love there.

Part of that, of course, is that ‘my watch’ is so intermittent.  OK, nonexistent!  It is just that tending gardens seems a lot like watching paint dry to me. If you go to the garden on Tuesday, it looks exactly like it did on Monday.  So, I do not go on Wednesday.  Or Thursday.  Or even Friday.  And then the plants die.  Aaaaannndd….I still do not really care.  I know I should.  But, I don’t. 

I want Sally to care instead.  

The veggies that come from a cared-for garden taste ten times better than the ones on Styrofoam and wrapped in plastic.  I love the veggies that come from the garden.  IF they come.  If they do NOT come, I find myself caring about the veggies that are NOT THERE but should be.  It is kinda juvenile on my part.  So, I dig and take direction.  It is the least I can do.  I’ve looked at this issue a great deal and determined that it is literally the LEAST I can do.  So, Sal ‘cares’ for the garden.  I care about EATING the garden.  We have kind of ‘worked it out’ philosophically but we still currently have no garden.  So, more digging, I guess.

Sal will tell me what to do.