Strathcona Tweedsmuir School - Paidia Yearbook (Okotoks, Alberta Canada)

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I have been that if you repeat mind, and also the not be long before to plant a garden. THE TRIALS OF VEGETABLE GARDENING working on an advertising project for Mrs. Foster, and everyone says anything often enough, it will eventually Hsink inn. with this in emphasis recently about Hgetting back to naturen, I know that it will someone in my family gets the bright idea that it is time once more How well I remember last year - indeed, I was quite enthusiastic, for we happen to have a farm near Calgary and I could envision row upon row of delicious, edible goodies. But it didn't quite work out that way. Having a patch plowed was easy. We watched someone else do it, but to find a crew to build a small fence was like finding hen's teeth. They would do it next month, next year, or even last year, but not then. HNo problem,U said Father,Hwe will do it ourselves - must be good and strong - seven footers, well-pounded in, and a spot of barbed wire.H We hauled posts. We dug holes. We pounded. In spite of a line and measure, the posts were somewhat zig-zag, because every time I hit a rock, I certainly wasn't going to waste time digging it out. I dug a hole next to it, east or west. The line of posts resembled in straightness something like the hind leg of a donkey. Father shook his head, but there was no time to redo it. He did not even give my blisters time to heal before he headed for the wire. Have any of you ever done battle with a shiny new roll of barbed wire? You get one end stapled to the first post and carry the roll on an iron rod to the last post. I thought it weighed five hundred pounds, or maybe one thousand, but by the time we reached the last post, I had revised my thinking to two thousand pounds. Next, you use a wrecking bar to tighten the wire from the first post, pulling around the first post until the wire is taut. NTighter,H said Father, Hit doesn't ping.H Nell, if the first post is not well and truly anchored, it will decide to collapse as you tighten the wire. This means starting all over again, and shows that you did not do what you were supposed to do in the first place. Another thing I learned was that barbed wire is as cunning as elastic. when you attach one end and try to tighten it to the next post, the first end waits until you are bending down, busy with staples, then it whips around and hits you a stinging blow on the backside. HB0-ingn it shouts gleefully as you leap forward, in great pain, barbs impaling every part of you within reach. Hwhy are you dancing about like that?H asked Father. HGet on with it. The seeds should be in.H with blood dripping, I carried on until the fence was considered horse-proof. Everything Father does has to be horse-proof or bull-proof or both. Then came the fertilizer. Not for us the artificial kind. Oh dear me no. It had to be the real stuff, right from the barn. The tractors were busy elsewhere, so it came down to good old me, with a wheelbarrow and pitch-fork, digging in an ancient barn, whose floor, I do declare, could not possibly have seen the light of day since 1900. I plodded back and forth for hours, indeed days. 28

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The one that really iced an already sore head and sour stomach, as the sun was rising in the east was, Hwhen you've worried me to death, don't come crying to my funeral. Just let the whole world know that you killed your mother Ne all tried to circumvent that floorboard, but to no avail only prolonged the symphony. from a neighboring board Recently we had a were working. One of the up to the hardware store new men for with worry.H . Crawling over it Jumping over it produced a thud and a sympathetic groan while the carpet men carpet laid. Ne were eating our lunch came into the kitchen and told my mother that he was going nails so that he could repair a slightly loose floorboard in the hallway. She thanked him but refused his kind offer by saying,UPlease don't destroy the ecology of this house. That floorboard has served me well. That's my built- in warning system. It doesn't bark or biteg it doesn't shedg it doesn't need a licence and I don't have to feed it.H The young man seemed puzzled and we all looked at each other with that look that implied we didn't want Mom letting strangers know of her approaching senility. The workman returned to the hallway and in a few seconds we all followed him. Ne wanted to look at that strange device before it was covered by that new carpet for another fifteen years. Never can tellg we might need one of those in our own homes someday. PAUL MCKENNA GRADE 12 MINNER, LOCKE SHORT STORY CONTEST, 1978. A STORY ABOUT A GIRL WHO LOST HER DOG I woke up last Thursday and went to see my dog Blackie but he was not there. I went to get my Mom and told her that the dog was lost. I got my friend Deidre and we went looking for the dog. Ne heard a band. It was a circus band, so we went to the circus. Ne watched the circus and at the end a man held up a big box . He opened the box and there was Blackie. He asked if anyone owned the dog. I said it was mine so we went home very happy and played with Blackie. AISLING REIDY GRADE I MY DOG My door is wrecked. My dog did it. He did it with his teeth. It cost 550. My dad got very mad. He got so mad we sold him. ROBBIE MCCALLUM GRADE I l 27

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Father decided to mechanize the next step. Time was running out. It is all very well to have plows and discs churning up your garden, but clearing up afterwards is something else. There were ruts so deep at the turns that I could easily have buried a cow, let alone a lettuce seed. However, after much groaning, and the thought of Hfood to comen, these canyons were raked over and seeding began. Carrots and onions, beets and squash. Row after row of potatoes. As I disposed of each one - hole, plop, cover - I could envisage them multiplying into a couple of tons of French fries, sizzling golden brown. You name the seed, we had some. No sooner had I finished putting in the last row when Father came to inspect. HTime to start weeding,H he said. HGood grief,H I replied, Hhow could they grow so quickly?H But they had. There they were, millions of them, a sea of disgustingly healthy green weeds, and not a vegetable in sight. After hours of diligent hoeing, I sank exhausted into bed very night. Soon the vegetables were showing. I was ecstatic, and watered with abandon, until the well went dry. Then Father had to have a new well drilled at huge expense. But we didn't give up. The sun shone. I weeded and watered, and all the vegetables were looking great, until the animals found them. The rabbits were the first. They nibbled contentedly on the lettuce, until they were confined to an escape-proof pen. Some kind of worm ate twenty-five per cent of the onions. The sunflowers were a sheer delight of nodding yellow, towering to great heights, until the horses ate the tops off the tallest ones. Two of the pigs wiggled from their pens - they loved the carrots. A few days later I noticed a row of green skeletons and found to my horror that the pretty butterflies I had admired so much had deposited eggs, now caterpillars, which were rapidly devouring the complete cabbage crop. After a vigorous campaign of extermination, the damage was assessed at fifty per cent. Another day the turkeys decided that they would investigate the growing greenery. Never before had they strayed into that area, but after a morning visit our pea crop had been reduced considerably. A pet pigeon had a ball with the strawberries, and the chickens considered our garden very inviting, it must have been open season for them on bugs and shoots.0nly the spinach grew in unparalleled splendour - horrible and dark green, it positively flourished. Nothing liked it, not even I. Once we found small red potato beetles on the leaves, and these had to be plucked off, though I never did discover why. I had no intention of eating potato leaves. A few gophers decided to set up house-keeping right in the middle of the pumpkin patch. when they sat up and waved at me, whilst chewing a squash, I decided that was it. I hosed them down. Then, one day the old milk cow waddled over and managed to get her head in between the fence wires. Corn was her specialty, and she happily munched all within neck reach The potatoes looked good, but we were somewhat atsonished to find that one side of every row contained plant. The mystery was on his hands and knees out the largest tubers the plants! He did not no tubers, and even I knew that potatoes grew all around the solved when we discovered that one of the tenants had been seen in the garden patch in the middle of the night, he was scooping from each side as he sped up every other row without disturbing stay our tenant very long. However, despite a rapidly depleted crop, the remainder of the salad items was delicious, and there was ample for the final harvest. The squash were superb. The pumpkins huge - and the spinach just grew and grew. By the end of September it was all over. The first frost had come and at last we could relax. 29