No More Gardening, Let's Go Fishing!

I quit gardening this year.

For the second time.

No more tilling, planting, weeding, watering, or harvesting for me.

My family always grew a large vegetable garden, and I was required to work in it. Once I left home, I vowed to never garden again, a vow I kept until I began growing gardens of my own.

I had a small garden in Livingston, and a bit larger one in Bozeman, but it was in Malta where I really cut loose. My first garden here was a 15 x 40-foot plot soon followed by another of the same size. Eventually, I added another 40 x 80-foot space dedicated to beans and corn.

What Barb and I didn’t eat fresh we canned and froze. The surplus was shared with neighbors and friends.

I eventually added a greenhouse and started all my own plants from seed.

Then we bought a cabin on a lake.

Priorities changed.

I began to resent the time spent trying to keep the gardens alive during the drought of the last few years. What little produce I was able to grow came at a cost: less lake time.

Raised as I was to respect hard work, fishing was always considered play. Gardening was what we did to feed ourselves. If there was a little spare time we might fish, but always after the work in the garden was done.

I’m at a point in my life now, however, where I don’t feel it necessary to follow the rules. Forget the chores, let’s just go fishing. I find great delight in playing before the work is done.

I also have good Hutterite friends who will keep us in vegetables.

There’s only so much time left. Let it be on the water with a rod in hand, not in the garden hoeing.

It’s been an easy transition. I don’t long for those days in the garden.

Like many things we quit, I wish I’d done it sooner. As much as I enjoyed eating fresh vegetables out of the yard, I’d rather concentrate on fish I can eat fresh out of the lake.

They say you can’t get too much of a good thing.

I hope to find out.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]