I’ll preface this story with this comment:  Ethan LOVES to help do laundry.  He’s quite good at his job too — which is to enthusiastically THROW all of the clothes from the designated pile into the machine. 

 Yesterday Ethan and Tim were playing on the dining room floor after supper.  So I thought I’d seize the moment to start a load of clothes.  The utility room is just a kitchen away from the dining room, so I could still hear them talking about toys and how their days went, etc.  But almost the INSTANT I started the water running Ethan squealed, jumped up to run in and help, and said something to Tim that I didn’t catch.

Later Tim asked if I’d heard the child’s comment.  "No, what did he say?"     Tim (laughing) told me, "He said, ‘You tay wite here, Daddy.  Ethan be wite back and pway a you."   Can’t have Daddy thinking he’s being abandoned.

Ethan and I spent the last 9 days of August in Colorado — kind of a last chance to visit "home" before I’m grounded from travel because of pregnancy. It was glorious to be away from the heat and humidity of the place I now call home. But one of the BEST things was reaping the rewards of Grandma Fern’s labor in the garden!

The second day we were there the four of us snapped green beans in Grandma’s back yard, while she did the inside stuff for canning said beans. Ethan was very into helping (at least for a while) and proundly exclaimed, "Dis hard work!" The next day after church the whole family came out to the log house (Mom and Dad’s place) for lunch. Grandma saved out a BUNCH of beans and cooked them up for part of the meal. She also brought about 5 tomatoes from the garden.

Grandma Garden Tomatoes cannot be beat! While we were there I ate some almost every day and simply reveled in the flavor — fabulous stuff! I’ve grown my own tomatoes before and you really can’t beat a home-grown tomato, but I like them even better from Grandma’s garden. As Garrison Keillor (sp?) once said in a Lake Woebegone story, "At the end of winter you’d kill for a good tomato — you would! Not those colored styrofoam balls they strip-mine down in Texas, but a REAL tomato!" Amen.

Anyway, Ethan had a blast going to the garden two different times to help pick broccoli, yellow squash, zucchini, 2 kinds of onion, carrots, bell peppers, lettuce, and 3 varieties of tomato. (And Grandma "didn’t do much" with her garden this year! There was less than usual of everything that she DID plant, and no beets or corn or cukes for pickling.) I guess we can cut her some slack seeing as how she had some strokes 3 years ago and hasn’t been quite her old self since. And the woman is in her early 80′s for Pete’s sake! Everyone actually told her to give up the garden this year. But I kind of think it’s one of the things that keeps her going.

I also made some of the best corn salsa, pico de gallo, and sauteed peppers/onions I’ve ever made for a family fajita dinner thanks to the garden. So Grandma, thanks for the hard work! But maybe you should cut back even a little more next year.