Ward 3 Vegetable Garden Tour

Last Saturday morning I was sitting on my porch, writing a letter Stan, when a man dressed up as an ear of corn pedaled up to my house on a bicycle and said, "I'm a stalker.  I'm here to help."  He was a volunteer for Northampton's third annual Ward 3 Vegetable Garden Tour, and he kept me company, cracking corny jokes as the tour began.      

Being that the tour took place on the first Saturday of August and that we'd endured a long drought, I was pretty worried that my garden would not look its best and therefore not warrant being on the tour, but looks, of course, were not what the tour was about.  The tour was about people, and by my rough estimate I would say that thirty, forty people came through.  At one point there were seven people on my porch and among my garden, which isn't all that of an unusual sight, but these were seven people whom I had never met before.  These photos, however, are courtesy of a friend—bless hon—who happened to be visiting from New Jersey.  Here she is, wearing an enormous amount of purple.

I didn't do much gardening during the tour, but I did happily zip around and answer questions about my garden.  Mainly about my corn and whether or not I had problems with critters.  My corn, it seems, turned out to the be point-of-interest in my garden.  A lot of people said, I've never seen corn growing in the front yard!  And so it's true.  Corn in the front yard isn't something you see every day.    

There I am, looking off into the distance, very possibly toward New Mexico, the place where I am bound come mid-September.  Peeping up from behind my tomatoes is the wonderful Toast, translator, poet, and creator of the weeks, a new calendar that dispenses with months and gives each week of the year its own name, a system that is both fanciful and practical.  This year's garden tour took place at the tail end of Dyamid, which, I must admit, was a tough week for me. 

Finally we have the wonderful and talented Joanne Mackiewicz, organizational mastermind and garden tour head honcho.  It was Joanne who contacted me about being on the tour back in June, and for that I want to say thanks.  Thanks, Joanne, the tour was a blast.