The good life of working together ~ August 11, 1994

David Heiller

It was late on Sunday by the time Cindy and I got to the beans. It was on our list on Saturday morning, at least in our heads, along with numerous other chores. But by the time we’d weeded flower beds and cleaned the house and baked bread and cleaned the freezer (to name a few), it was Sunday evening.

Beets!

To make matters worse, when we cleaned the freezer, we had found a dozen packages of frozen beans from last year’s garden. And here was another bumper crop waiting impatiently. Maybe that’s why we didn’t get to them till so late, why we weren’t excited about it.

But we finally grabbed four ice cream buckets at about 7 p.m. on Sunday, and tackled the beans.

It was a two-person job. We were tired, that Sunday-night kind of tired where you just want to curl up with a book or take a leisurely bike ride.

But with that other person across the row, working at the same easy pace, the job wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was good.

Queen Ida helping in the garden

We talked about this and that. We admired some beans, and tossed out others that rabbits had nibbled. When we found a nice cluster, we showed them to the other person.

Without Cindy there, it would have been a tedious job, and I would have grumbled. My thoughts would have been on that book or that bike ride.

But somehow Cindy and the garden made things good, which is the way things usually go. We filled three and a half buckets, and I thought, “I couldn’t have done that alone.”

We put the kids to bed and took a sauna. We took the beans with us, and snapped them there. We joked about that. “Sauna Seasoned,” we called them, and “Sauna Steamed.” A new brand.

Maybe we could sell them in Finlayson or Kettle River, to the Finlanders.

We went in the house at 9:30. We didn’t want to freeze any beans. We wanted to go to bed. But I said I’d do it if she’d do it, and she said the same thing, so we stayed up till 10:15, cutting and blanching and bagging and freezing two gallons of beans.

We both felt good about the evening. Partly it was that feeling you get when you overcome fatigue and finish a job that needs to be done.

Canning the syrup, another good two person job!

But more than that, it was knowing that you couldn’t have done it, or wouldn’t have done it, without that someone special by your side.

I often wonder how people raise gardens without the help of their spouse or significant other. It wouldn’t be nearly as fun. You wouldn’t have anyone to work with. When you got tired, you wouldn’t have that other person pick up your end a little, or offer encouragement.

“Come on, let’s go pick beans.”

“I’ll freeze them if you will.”

Life is like that, I guess. The good life.