failed hippie

i have a good friend clifford, who refers to me as a neo-hippie. upon hearing the title, i instantly took to it.  i have a deep desire to live in a hut in the middle of nature, i juice vegetables, i hate showering, i sew my own clothes, my deepest fear is that my kid will want to wear abercrombie their whole life, and i have lived in a van for a month. however, i love gadgets, large impressive construction sites, and cool whip.  so neo-hippie works well.

embracing the hippie version, i decided this was the year i was finally going to be able to grow a garden. i went to the nursery, bought everything the guy told me to and went home ready to plant. what i planned to be an efficient, nurturing process with mother nature, turned into the community after-school activity, as a multitude of neighborhood kids descended on me and my helpless saplings like locusts. with my broken spangelish and maria as my translator, myself and 8 neighborhood kids managed to stick all the little plants in the ground. (i stay "stick", because they went in but it was not "planting". it was more like strangle and plunge.)  then i sat and waited. then hail pounded down, the squirrels picked, the yard collected trash, my neighbors tree grew and my garden sunk deeper into its hole of failure every day. now as i come home each day i am forced to look at the graveyard that was once my future garden and curse.

however, one glorious  day i came home and saw it. one lone tomato hidden under a branch. (see picture above) i had to pick it before, either squirrel, flash flood, or noisy neighbor stole it. 

so you are probably asking what i am going to do with this pathetic looking piece of produce. you know what i am going to do, i am going to eat it. i am going to slice it up, sprinkle some salt and relish every last unripe bite. 

failure may not feel good, but doing something out of spite tastes sweet.