You Like Gardening, Don’t You?

July 16, 2005

I arrived last night, just past midnight, at a quiet house full of sleeping relatives. Two were asleep on the living room couch, two more sleeping in the "computer room", another two on the fold-out couch in the family room, and my mother was asleep in her bedroom. My father led me to a couch of my own, set aside in the sunroom. "You need anything?" he asked.

"No, I'm good."

"Then I'm gonna go to sleep. I'll see you in the morning."

I soon joined the rest of my kin as the last rotten egg in Slumberville and snoozed through the night.

This morning, my siblings and assorted nieces went to the beach, but the threatening skies left me uninspired to tag along. Instead, I helped my mother put some plants in the ground around the house.

"You like gardening, don't you?" asked my mother.

"I love it, " I said, pushing in the dirt around a small plant I didn't know the name of. "And I never get to do it."

Which is true. A tree may grow in Brooklyn, but it's not my tree.

Maybe later I'll take some pictures.