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Would she still be here in the winter?
The thought gave her pause, but she tried to push it aside. She wasn’t going to worry about it. Not today. There wasn’t anything she could do, other than keep an eye out for a job that would sustain her all year. Rather, she needed to be grateful for what she had, looking for an opportunity to give back.
Somehow that seemed important. That, if God were going to bless her, she needed to turn around and see who she could bless. After all, God didn’t want to give her things just so she could hoard them to herself.
The garden wasn’t a typical garden. Not like Jubilee was used to seeing, with rows tilled up in the dirt, and everything on level ground. Lana’s garden consisted of fifteen or twenty raised beds. They weren’t wooden beds, like the kind Jubilee was used to seeing, but had some kind of metal type sides to them. They had been filled with dirt or something, and at least half of them looked as though they were planted with spring vegetables. Peas, onions, beets, radishes, and lettuce.
Jubilee gave a small prayer of thanks to her aunt who had raised her and who had had a large garden every year. At least Jubilee knew what she was looking at.
“I’ve never worked on raised beds before,” Jubilee said as she walked toward Clara who stood beside a container full of onions.
“It makes everything so much easier. We have weed fabric down on the paths and mulch on top of it. There is no weeding anything except the dirt inside the raised beds, and I’ve been careful to put cardboard down before I put any kind of compost in each year. So that’s kept the weeds down there. I don’t know about you, but the worst part of gardening for me is weeding.”
Jubilee laughed. “I know this is crazy, but I don’t really mind weeding. Unless the ground is really dry and the weeds don’t come out very well, and then it’s frustrating.”
“You are my new best friend, because I’m happy to plant, I’m happy to water, I’m happy to harvest. I’m even happy to go into the kitchen and cut and cook and can. But weeding? I hate it.”
“All right then. I’ll be the official weeder.”
“You might be the official everything. I have a job offer that will take me to the Cities. I haven’t accepted it yet. But I’ve been thinking about it.”
“More money?” Jubilee guessed.
Clara nodded. “I’ve got as far as I can in my job here. If I want to advance at all, if I want to make more, I need to move.”
Jubilee knew how that was. Not that she ever really experienced it. She’d gone from low-wage job to low-wage job, after marrying not long after high school. She never wanted to be a part of the corporate world, and that was part of the reason. She didn’t have a thirst for advancement or for climbing the corporate ladder. She just wanted to be a mom to her kids and a wife to her husband.
“Seems to me that what your mom has right here is the perfect setup.”
“You know, the longer I live, the more I think that’s true. I... Maybe that’s why I’m having such a hard time deciding whether or not I’m going to take this job. I don’t really want to move, sure. And don’t really want to be even more stuck in the grind of nine to five. I want to... I’m just not sure. Isn’t that terrible?”
“No. I don’t think it’s terrible. I think we’re probably pushed into doing things we don’t want to do because that’s what society expects of us. Maybe the more we’re around people who think we should want a career and money and all of that, the more we feel guilty if that’s not really what makes us happy.”
“Mom always said happiness was a choice. I believe that, but I also think that sometimes your circumstances really play a part in it as well.”
“Maybe we can have joy without having our circumstances be perfect, but happiness has a little bit more to do with what’s going on in our lives. It’s hard to be happy when you’re in the city alone, with no friends and a job you don’t enjoy.”
“Yeah. Although Mom said we could learn to enjoy our work no matter what we did. It was all part of our mindset.”
“The more I hear about your mom, the wiser I think she is.” Jubilee meant that with her whole heart. Because she had to admit she agreed with Lana that a person was pretty much about as happy as what they chose to be, regardless of their circumstances.
“So what I try to do is follow the chart that you see on this website. I’ll send it to you. What’s your phone number?” Clara said as she pulled out her phone and pulled up a website.
Jubilee gave it to her, and soon her phone pinged with the website information for weather and frost dates along Lake Michigan.
“You notice that there is a variation. Some years we’re early, some years we’re late. But I just try to use that as a guide. So for now, these are all the things I have planted. Have you ever raised plants in a garden before?” Then she laughed. “You must have, if you know that you enjoy weeding.”
“I have. And I recognize the onions and the carrots and the beets.” Jubilee continued to rattle off the things that she saw, pointing to them so that Clara would know she wasn’t making it up.
They decided Clara would work on planting the beans and pumpkin seeds she had, while Jubilee worked on weeding.
“It’s past time to go to the greenhouse and get pepper and tomato plants to plant. I rotate every year, and last year, those two tubs had the early vegetables in them, so I figured I would put the peppers and tomatoes in them this year.”
“All right. If you tell me where the greenhouse is, I can make a trip. If not today, maybe tomorrow. I’ll have to talk to Lana and see if she had anything else planned for me.”
“She usually puts a premium on the garden, unless there are rooms that need to be cleaned so she can flip them the same day.”
“We’re probably getting to that time of year.”
