Brand loyalty

When someone's character is not clear to you, look at that person's friends.
~ Japanese proverb

Toothpaste: Colgate
Skin Care: Clinique
Hair Care: Biolage
Peanut Butter: Peter Pan Creamy
Bottled Water: Evian
Soft Drink: Diet Coke with Lemon
Laundry Detergent: Tide Liquid
Underwear: Jockey for Her
Cat Food: Purina One Hairball Control
Toilet Paper: Kleenex Cottonelle
Paper Towels: Bounty
Facial Tissue: Puffs
Cereal: Special K Red Berries
Fabric Softener: Downy Liquid
Computer: Apple Mac
Toothbrush: Oral B
Pizza: Pizza Hut Chicken Supreme
Ice Cream: Ben & Jerry's New York Superfudge Chunk
Cocktail: Bloody Mary
Candy bar: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

Bob went out to spend the afternoon and evening with a friend whose wife has a big garden, and he came home with lettuce and brocolli and sage and radishes. I can't remember the last time I had a radish, but I love them. I washed two and cut off their ends and ate them. Makes me remember how much better home-grown produce is, and makes me think I need to walk down to the Market on my lunch hour sometimes and buy fresh vegetables.

I don't really wish for a big garden myself. It's a lot of work, and I doubt I'd be motivated to spend enough time in it. Not that we have the room for one anyway, but I don't miss it. I used to grow a couple of tomato plants in containers on the patio, but I haven't done that for a couple of years. I don't really do anything to them, just stick them out there and if we get tomatoes, fine. I think I lost interest the year we had a bunch of caterpillars in the garden. They were attracted by the dill, as I recall, and they were big, ugly, green things. Tomato worms? Yuck. I don't think I'm cut out for a real garden.

But I love it when people give us stuff, of course. My mom used to have a pretty substantial garden, but I don't think she does anymore. I was thinking about her today when I was out planting my few little things in the yard. I would kneal down and dig a hole (really hard work, since our soil is almost all clay--I actually broke a trowel!), plant something, then get up and go over somewhere else and kneal down and plant something else, then do it over and over and over again . . . and it made me think of my over-75 year old mother, and wonder how she's been able to do it for so many years.

That's probably the key, though--doing it constantly. I do my gardening in spurts, almost always on the weekends, and not every weekend, at that. She's probably in better shape than I am.