Melissa's Place

Tag Along

Everyone talks about the over-abundance of zuchini, come harvest time, in every farmer's life. But no one mentions the over-abundance of spinach or lettuce. Well, our farm share this week and last has brought us lovely, organic greens such as lettuces and spinach, and our garden spinach and lettuce is ripe for the picking. In fact, the spinach has gone to seed. So I've become the neighbourhood vegetable tramp. I give it away like it grows on trees. Well, it grows in the ground actually. But I bag it every day and I skip across the road, across the driveway, across the lawn, to whoever's house, with my wares. If they take the spinach, but mention they like lettuce. Well, the next day they get lettuce.

Well, today, I sat in the yard and plucked some fresh spinach. Then I gathered Cole onto my hip, took the lettuce in a grocery bag, and off I went to Sharon and Tim's house.

Sharon and Tim's house is under renovations. Sharon, after thanking me for the spinach, wanted to show me around their home and explain all the renovations. I was fascinated and succumbed to the tour of the dishevelled house that will soon be their homeowner's dreams come true. Just as we were finishing the tour (we'd been upstairs, downstairs, in the powder room, in the basement, seen the water damage, seen the spot where the staircase used to be, seen the spot where the closets used to be, etc.) I caught a glimpse of something in my peripheral vision. I turned my head to the left and there, on my left shoulder, dancing mockingly in on my T-shirt, was a bright green inch worm.

My thoughts were, in this order:
1) ICK!
2) How did you get there? Oh, probably in the garden.
3) I wonder if Sharon has seen you. I wonder if she saw you as soon as she answered the door and she's been politely pretending you're not there. I mean, what do you say to someone with a worm on their shoulder? Perhaps, with my pig tails and my spinach, the inch worm was just the proverbial cherry atop my hippiness.

What do you do so as not to draw attention to the inch worm on your shoulder?

Swift as a cat, when Sharon turned her head, I reached up with my right hand, pinched the thing hard and flicked it onto a pile of magazines near the telelvision.

The inch worm comes free with the spinach.