One Man's Garbage...

We were planning to go to town today. I dressed in my "go to town clothes", and the kids had their clothes all picked out for changing into after their time outside. Then Pa got inspired.

He'd been eyeing a leaning tree down the driveway and, perhaps because it wasn't raining today he decided early this afternoon would be a good time to take it down. Of course, once he managed to cut it down, and had it hooked up to the truck, and began dragging it out to a more manageable position, things didn't go quite the way he had planned. It seems once down, the tree grew, and put on a bit of weight, which resulted in the tree dragging the truck rather than the other way around. Naturally, the truck ended up in a ditch, which Pa then had to maneuver back out of the ditch before proceeding with plan B.

Fortunately, plan B worked, but the delay was enough to convince us we'd be better off waiting until tomorrow for our weekly trip to town. The only problem with that was, our dinner plans were based upon our planned shopping trip, so dinner plans now had to be changed. The kids decided they wanted take out, and so Pa loaded them up in the truck and they were off to the little store down the road in search of our version of local take-out. That would be frozen dinners.

When my happy troopers returned home, Pa was carrying the bag with the kids' dinner choices. What confused me was the sight of Nathan hopping out of the truck, reaching into the back of the truck, his face glowing with happiness and pride, holding a large box out at arms length.

Standing in the house viewing this odd display, I was unable to see what was actually in the box. As Nathan turned, still beaming, and quickly headed towards his garden it began to occur to me what the box may have contained. Sure enough, after carefully setting the box down in the garden, he headed towards the house, only to return seconds later carrying his shovel.

The little store down the road sells a small assortment of fresh produce, and it seems that it dawned on my son that perhaps some of these fruits and vegetables might, on occasion begin to go bad before someone purchased them. Therefore, while Pa and Lindsay were busy browsing through the frozen food selection, he walked up to the owner of the store and asked if perhaps she may have some rotten produce laying around, and if so, could he have it for his garden? It just so happened she did have exactly what he was asking for, and he could take all he wanted.

Nathan is now a very happy gardener, preparing his soil for the spring plantings he's been so eagerly anticipating all winter long.

Tomorrow, we go to town!