I have a vegetable vision. Or rather, I have a vision of vegetables.
I imagine them in a little plot out back. The plot will be the birthplace of carrots and tomatoes and string beans and chard and zucchini and peppers and all manner of squash.
In my vegetable vision, I will visit the plot daily.
I will be wearing, oh, a sweeping flowered skirt. I will have daisies in my hair, and nothing on my feet.
I will be carrying a wicker basket on my hip, which I will load up with freshly plucked bounty to transport to the house.
"Oh," the husband will say. (According to the vision, the husband will be wearing a plaid shirt, baggy pants and suspenders, but also be barefoot.) "I see the vegetable garden's being good to us again this year, my dear! Just look at the size of those beets! Borscht is it tonight?"
That's the vision. Unfortunately, that is not the reality.
And I'm not talking about the borscht.
Oh, every year, I tell myself that I will make the vision real. I will plan to rototill a patch of the yard, bring in some topsoil and get the seeds in the ground. I will become a back-to-the-land kind of gal, instead of a back-tothe-grocery kind of woman.
Then May hits. Then June. Then July.
"You still planning to put in that veggie garden?" the husband will ask. Oh, on or about the 14th of July.
I will glance at the calendar.
"Too late," I will say. "Next year."
Then next year will arrive - but the vegetable garden won't. A couple of pots of tomatoes, perhaps. But nothing resembling the plot.
I put this down, of course, to the fact I am just too busy doing other things to get the plot in the ground. There's work. There's golf. There's lounging around with the spouse.
Then there's this: the shopping. Heck, I'm too busy shopping for vegetables - among other things - to put a veggie plot in the yard.
And let's face it: the produce at the grocery store is not exactly sub-par. It may not have that sweet just-plucked-fromthe-ground aroma to it. It may not have that endearing dusting of earth.
But if you can get past the fact that you have to pay for it, well, it tends to work for me.
"But you don't have the satisfaction of saying that you grew it," the husband will point out.
"I know, I know," I say. "Someday."
Indeed, I swear that someday I will take off the shoes and get up to my elbows in planting.
Until then, I'll get my carrots at the store - and maybe carry them home in a basket.
