It Can't Be Beet

I grocery shop online every 16 days and have it delivered; today's delivery surprised me with vanilla yogurt instead of plain; a carton of 18 eggs rather than 12; and strangest, a bunch of fresh beets in place of a radish bunch.

How'd that happen? Indeed the illustration of the radish bunch on the order form might have looked a lot like fresh beets to the Middle Eastern middle-aged man who shopped and delivered today. He bypassed the house and I had to trot 100 yards after him to say, "I'm the first house. It says on my note, it's the first house you see." "Ho, sorry," he said, while I fled indoors; he wasn't masked like the other delivery people, and was long gone before I unpacked the groceries. The packaging and bags stank of cigarette smoke, and I thought: This time I ought to call the bosses and complain. His unusual name -- I looked it up -- is Arabic for "generous."

Annoyed, I washed and cooked the beets, which bled all over, meanwhile wondering who was this man, and where from? Syria? I happen to love beet greens and beet roots; radishes are the spartan, bloodless version, not so tasty but easier to clean up. Complain because there were 18 eggs and not 12? Divine, have you yourself ever made a mistake? (Yes.) Were folks tolerant and kind when you messed up on the job? (Mostly, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart.) Divine, you smoked for years; did people complain about the cloud of reek hanging about you? (Only once.) Could you go into a Middle Eastern supermarket with a list made of pictures and get everything just right? (No.) His job is one no one wants unless they really, really need the money. I wondered whom he is supporting. Like everybody, he's doing the best he can. I didn't call.

Lazy Vegetable Planting

Collards, one of my favorite greens, thrive in extreme weather, especially the extreme Missouri summer heat, and I bought what I thought was four plugs of them but it was six and I let them sit in their tray for a week not knowing how I was going to get the muscle and vertebrae to weed and turn over a patch of soil big enough to plant them 18 to 24 inches apart. It seemed impossible. The little plants' leaves began turning yellow. I had to act or throw them away. I asked the powers that be to solve my problem.

It so happens there are two eight-foot boards left in the lawn from a coldframe that was built around 2001, which I dismantled in 2011 except for those two boards I couldn't move and let lie there. Where the coldframe's vegetables were is now a tangle of wildflowers and weeds (see top left of photo). Yet over the years the boards rotted and weakened a bit and I jostled  one around, pulling it backward; and behold, beneath it was an eight-foot strip of fresh, rich, worm-happy, almost-weed-free, sun-facing soil just right for planting my collards 18 to 24 inches apart. No weeding, no digging, simply planting. How lucky! How great! How lazy! Divinely inspired.