It's happened

Do any of you remember the moment that you started reading?  Like, really reading, when you figured out the code?   That time you opened up your favorite book, The Carrot Seed for example, for the 100th time and you actually read the words instead of just reciting the story from memory?  One minute you can't read, then next you can.  Like magic, you were just changed. You could never not read again. Do you remember that? Suddenly the whole world looked different.  You could read.
Or maybe you remember that moment when you finally got the hang of riding your bike?   You know, that evening when you were in the street in front of your house on Pearson Dr on your brand-new-to-you hand-me-down-from-the-big-sister blue Schwinn with your dad* giving you the 100th run-and-push of the night, and you just did it.  One run-and-push you fell over, the next you took off!  Just like that.   You are transformed.  You'll never not ride a bike again! It happened in an instant and you became a different person.  You were then a bike rider.  You were free. Do you remember that?
Or maybe you were there when a child of your own (or someone else's) started to read, or ride a bike, or walk or talk.  Do you know the kind of moment to which I'm referring?
So, I had one of those moments today.  It's so very cool.  One second I'm cursing the weeding in my orto and the orto in general, then next second....I loved it.  Yes, even the weeding.  Particularly the weeding.It happened in an instnat.  I will never be a non-weeder again in my life.  Oh my god, a new world has opened to me.  I feel liberated and free. I am transformed.

weeded basil

And you should see my beans!  I might need to have a bigger orto next year just so I have more weeding to do.  I rationed out how much I did today so that I have some to do tomorrow.  Corn, baby, here I come.

So now I'm a weeder.  I don't feel quite comfortable yet calling myself a gardener but I think this was an important step.  Maybe I will call myself a gardener when shit like this doesn't surprise me any more...

Is that what corn on the cob looks like when it's growing? 
 Um, I can forgive myself for being 43 and not yet a real gardener but, for fuck's sake I grew up in Wisconsin, the granddaughter of farmers.  How is it possible that I don't know what corn looks like in its infancy?
I've got to run now.  A package is being delivered to me on the 8.40 train...better go retrieve it, um, him.


*might have been you, mom.  sorry I don't remember...I was looking forward.