I realise this is a date late. But last night I was unable to post because I was making a quadruple layer caramel cake for my sister. It had three different kinds of icing guys.

I’m paying for it now though because I taste-tested/drank so much icing that my sweat glands are oozing salted caramel. It’s really taking a toll on my white shirt collection.

Published in On Our Selection News September 1, 2016

 

Gardening has never been something that has come easily to my family.

 

We have several fruit trees which we assume to be some form of citrus, but each season they only bear yellowy balls of despair, which are hard as rocks, taste like lemon-flavoured stomach bile and really make a mess of the lawn.

 

The lone gum tree we planted when we moved in now stands as a lifeless stump in our backyard, a beacon of the hopelessness. It copped a few heavy branch losses in a few storms and then just gave up on life. Dad since sawed it to have a flat top, making it just about the right size to hold a single stubbie, presumably so you don’t have to hold your drink while sombrely taking in the grim plant graveyard that is our backyard.

 

The air in our backyard that used to be scented with the perfume of jasmine is now putrid with stench of nothingness – the jasmine bush decayed years ago, along with any hope our family would grow anything other than impossibly fine hair (it’s actually a big problem. I’ve never been able to pull off a mess bun because of it, which really spoils my off-duty ballerina look – that and my sloppy rig, of course). We had accepted our fate. We would never have a garden from Backyard Blitz. For us, Better Homes and Gardens was more like Better Homes and Don’t Even Try to Improve Your Garden You Plant-Killing Swine, which really doesn’t have the same ring to it.

 

But then last year something magical happened. We had this horse living in our backyard – we didn’t own her or anything, she was just crashing there for a stint while she figured her life out. Anyway, this couch surfer ended up eating everything in her path (I’ll just going to take this moment to pause and point out how much I am identifying with this old horse right now. It’s probably not an encouraging sign when you’re identifying with an elderly horse. But I think I’m just an empathetic person. Maybe I have a big heart or maybe I’m mentally unwell, but I feel bad for products in the bargain bin. The other day I bought the crumpled box of gravy because I could feel the pangs of rejection it must have endured. Seeing a “buy me quick” sticker with a severely reduced price tag makes me want to tell that wilting bouquet that it’s worth more than 60 cents. Going to the supermarket can be a pretty emotional experience for me).

 

Not wanting to be unHORSEspitable (couldn’t help myself), Dad went to great lengths to keep the old girl fed. He tried throwing out the veggie scraps to the pony, in a move that would have made relations between the horse and the chooks very sour indeed. In amongst the scraps were pumpkin seeds, which must have mixed with this hoofed houseguest’s… leavings.

 

Because within a few weeks a bloody pumpkin patch had popped up. It was like something out of a Paul Jennings book. Suddenly, Dad was a lord commander of a garden which actually produced something edible. It was like the angels of heaven conspired to create this miracle, which saw the world’s cheapest vegetables grow freely from the soil in our custody.

 

Since it sprung up, my family has probably saved all of $12 in grocery bills, and countless minutes not spent at the supermarket buying pumpkins. Sure, this might all add up to equal the cost of two Famous magazines and the time it takes to read them, but it’s a blessing nonetheless.

There’s two lessons to be learned from this modern-day parable (yes, I suppose this makes me Jesus, or at least some kind of spiritual guide). You can chose to take one or the other or both on board. You can also ignore my spiritual guidance but you’d be missing out on some ripper wisdom.

Moral One: if you want something bad enough, you should stop trying. Just do nothing and eventually what you’re hoping for will just magically appear. Because you deserve to be rewarded for all the work you didn’t do. Good things DO happen to white people!

Moral Two: never give up on your dreams, because you never know what can come out of a shitty situation.