I worked in the garden this morning

Along with a score of neighbors, I worked in the neighborhood garden this morning. I weeded one and a half rows of corn before going off to other commitments. The sun was up, and it was getting awfully warm before I finished. I was pretty sweaty. I was thinking we should have begun at six o'clock rather than eight.

"It was a lot easier to do this when I was 14," I said to my good wife after I came home. A bit later, in fact, I went to the gym to work out with my trainer and by then noticed I had used some muscles I was not used to using in my regular workouts.

Some of our neighbors have already been enjoying some of the fresh produce from the garden. The zucchinis are plentiful right now. The corn and beans and a variety of other vegetables are coming along.

We haven't been into gardening much over the years. Our focus has been on fruit trees, which tend to behave themselves and not get into too much mischief. We have four trees in our front yard: an apple, a cherry, a pear, and an apricot. This year birds ate most of the cherries, and the apricots are a lot thinner than in most years, probably because of the massive pruning of the tree early in the spring.

We pay neighbor boys to care for our lawn and flower gardens. Their mom grew up on a farm in northern Utah and wants her three sons to learn how to work. And to earn money for when they grow up and go away at their own expense to serve as Mormon missionaries. They still have a ways to go on learning how to work, but we're happy to contribute toward her goal. Last year they planted a row of green beans along our back fence. This year potatoes. In recent years that's pretty much been the extent of our vegetable gardening.