I’m Gardening again. This is the time of year when I till, plant and Weed a piece of ground while Mother Nature watches and laughs manically. Right now, early in the season, my Garden is in tiptop shape. It’s orderly—you can see actual rows—and completely weed free. If you want to see it, hurry because by next week it will look like something Indiana Jones wouldn’t venture into without a machete, chainsaw and a fully armored Humvee with a fifty caliber machine gun. Even now I can hear the weed seeds tittering at my arrogance. They’re hiding just beneath the surface waiting to pop out and start dancing the hokey-pokey as soon as I turn my back.

I’m not sure why I still garden. We’re not rich, but we certainly can afford to go to the Store and buy whatever we need to eat. My wife tells me it’s because I enjoy it. The same way she says I enjoy mowing the yard, scrubbing the floor and making all the meals. I did enjoy gardening at one time, back when I was young and had the brains of the cauliflower I’ve never been able to grow satisfactorily. These days enjoy is not the first word I would use. Sometimes the first word is one you can’t use in polite company.

People say food tastes so much better when you grow it yourself. I think it’s from the buckets of sweat that soaks into the ground when I’m out there weeding. I will concede that Fresh Vegetables do taste better than frozen or canned, but every year I am freezing and canning more and more of the stuff I get out of the garden—my wife says I enjoy that, too. I have to admit my homemade sauerkraut tastes better than anything I can get from the store, and I am sure we eat far more vegetables since we have a garden than we would if we had to buy everything at the store. Eating fresh vegetables is supposed to make you healthier. That and the exercise I get working in the garden will probably make me live longer, although if I have to keep pulling weeds, I’m not sure why I would want to.

The ebook for my new novel In The Lake is up on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. If you want the paperback, it’s still cheapest at the Wings site. Just click on any of those links above and they will take you to the site. Check it out. You can read the first chapter for free at Amazon.