The Accident-Prone Gardener

Turns out that I will be able to celebrate "Sneak A Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day" on August 8th after all. I pulled my Achilles playing soccer yesterday, and will not be going on a planned backpacking trip this weekend. I'm kinda bummed. I was really looking forward to getting out in the mountains. If it feels better (and I'm hoping it will if I stay off it today and tomorrow), I may go hike up Mt. Townsend or something. But the way your body moves day hiking is different than the way your body moves backpacking -- not to mention the amount of weight on your back -- so no backpacking. I console myself with the fact that there will be other trips, and that I will have things to harvest this weekend.

I'm a little bit accident-prone. Well, more than a little. I sprained my ankle so many times at Camp Parsons that the guys used to call spraining your ankle "pulling an Anna." If there's a hidden hole, I will probably find it. If there's something to hit one's head on, I'll find it too. It's hard to be aware of all the things that can hurt you when your head is in the clouds, or daydreaming about all the tomatoes in the garden.

Anyway, I'll be around this weekend. I believe that injuries are my body's way of telling me "Anna Elizabeth, you need some rest." So I will listen to my body. I'm trying to be better about doing that. If I listen to my body, I will take care of it. And I'm not going to get another one, you know. So I'd better be happy with and take care of what I've got!

On a completely unrelated note in this rather rambling post that has little to do about my garden, I've been thinking a lot about Whitman lately. Ten years ago this month I was a college freshman. Ten years. Wow. It is so hard to believe it's been that long. It feels like yesterday we were all arriving fresh out of high school, ready to enjoy the time of our lives. I remember meeting Ella in C-section, the long rides I used to take in the wheatfields, and long passionate debates with friends about nothing and everything all over again.

I found the journal I kept during my first couple years of college, and it's really taking me back to that time 10 years ago, when I was 18, fresh-faced, and eager for the rest of my life to begin. It's wonderful, reading these old posts to see what has changed and what has not. There are definitely some times when I want to go back to 18-year-old me and tell her not to be so sensitive -- that it's not the end of the world. There are some things that I am really glad I wrote about -- the candlelight vigil we held on September 11th, the death of one of my favorite professors, the time one of my friends engineered a serenade for me because I felt so lonely on Valentine's Day freshman year. I'm so glad I wrote everything down that I started keeping a journal again. I hadn't written anything in an actual journal for about two years.

And that's what this accident-prone gardener has been thinking about on this Friday. Hope all my readers are doing well.