Luck

The first time I ever played Lotto 649, I won. True story. I had just started working at a printing place where everybody went in on tickets every week. And, although my naturally frugal aspect was screaming, "Don't do it!" I threw in my $2.00, that first week, in order to feel a part of the group.
The next morning, there was great excitement in the shop. The owners son, a huge deaf-mute guy, was all flushed and sweaty. He motioned at us with his hands: five out of six numbers! We won!

After much checking and re-checking, it was determined that we had indeed won the "2nd" prize; five of six numbers. The jackpot was at least a million, but second place was much less; I think a few thousand dollars. Anyway, after we had divided it seven or eight ways, it came out to perhaps $260. each. At the time, about a weeks pay for me. A nice return on a $2.00 investment.

Imagine winning the lottery the first time you play it. How crazy is that?
It wasn't a lot of money but it was tremendously exciting. For me, it demonstrated two things. One, that lotteries were winnable. By ordinary people, like me and my co-workers. Two, that I was lucky. I couldn't help but think that while my co-workers had been playing the lottery for months and years before I came along, it was only when I joined in, that we won. I have always thought of myself as a lucky person; here now was proof.
For quite a long time after that, lottery tickets were irresistible. I justified buying them by telling myself I had that $260 in credit.

Fast forward twenty-three years or so. (My god, has it been that long?)
Although it embarrasses me to admit it, I still occasionally succumb to the lure of the lottery ticket. I cannot help but imagine winning. So many of my problems could be solved by an influx of cash, that the idea of winning is just too alluring to pass up. Yet I know, somewhere in there, that lotteries are exploitive. That they are institutional money-makers that exist because they make gazillions of dollars on the dashed dreams of poor people. A tax on the gullible and the desperate and the foolish. A tax on me.

I still think of myself as a lucky person but in reality, I almost never win anything. There are people who win door prizes regularly; whose names are pulled from hats; who pick the lucky chair; whose numbers are read out at the end of the evening. I am not one of them.
I only ever really won the lottery that one time. And the more I think about it, the less I think it has to do with me being lucky and the more it has to do with something else; something I'm not sure of and don't know how to name.

But whatever it is, I don't think I'll call it "luck".

Mid-Season Bean Report

Okay. It is now mid-summer and the gardens are in full swing. I rode over to the community garden to take a look. Here is what I found.

My Rattlesnake pole beans are amazing; prolific and delicious. They are probably my favourite bean this year. The Northeasters are confusing; flat, yellow beans except for one plant that bears long flat green beans. They're all very good but... I actually didn't expect them to be yellow. And what's with that green one?

The Tongue of Fire are obviously pole beans. They were sold to me as bush beans and that's how I planted them in both gardens... so they're a bit of a mess, twining and sprawling around. They are not particularly prolific. Additionally, they are apparently extremely attractive to bugs. They have sustained more damage than any of my other beans. We've eaten a bunch of them both as snap and as shelly beans; they're nice enough but not quite as special as I'd hoped.

My tomatoes are all over the ground, due to mismanagement. However, they are starting to ripen up nicely and we've been eating quite a lot of them. The Persimmon variety is fantastically sweet and lovely. The Brandywines are misshapen but delicious. I don't think I'll grow the "Heart" variety again; they are humongous but slow to ripen. I have a couple of mystery plants in there that are producing tomatoes of dubious quality; one appears to be some kind of Roma and I know I didn't plant any of those deliberately. Sigh...

In Karen's garden:

The Thibodeau de Compte Beauce are growing well and are very prolific and quite lovely. They look like a slightly heavy Rattlesnake bean. I'm growing them for dry beans which is good because their pods seem very tough. The Jacob's Cattle are also growing very well. They are reasonably prolific and seem untroubled by bugs. My soybeans look good and seem to be quite prolific. I want to eat some of them as edamame, but I'm not sure I can get out to Karen's to pick them at the right time for that. They were still flowering and had only tiny beans when I went out last week to weed and look at everything. It was kind of thrilling to see all the different beans hanging down from their respective plants.

I'm enjoying the gardens, even though they are more work than I can keep up with. Because of this, I think I'll try to do the community garden again next year. The dry bean garden is an hours drive from here, so not really feasible to maintain. I don't know what kind of yield I'll get from it but I can't really imagine that it will be cost-effective. Still, it will be nice to have some different beans for baking this winter, even if we don't get a lot of them.

If you crawl under a rock and die...

Once in a while, I get the feeling that I'd like to just crawl under a rock and die.

But if you crawl under a rock and die, you will never get to swim in cool, fresh water again. Nor sit in the shade of a hackberry tree and watch the river go by. You will not watch with joy the little yellow warblers flying through the willows on the riverbank. Or feel a cold, wet dog's nose, followed by little wake-up kisses, so gentle, on your eyelids in the morning.

Yesterday, we rode our bicycles to Pinehurst Conservation Area and went swimming. It is one of the parks of Rob's childhood, so we spent the day re-visiting some memorable campsites and trails. We ate a picnic lunch under some big old white pines and oak trees and explored the gorgeous Carolinian forest. It's amazing to me that we can ride our bikes for just a couple of hours and end up in a place with noticeably different flora from our own. Notably, there were a lot of large shagbark hickories, some pawpaw trees, and various flowering plants that I am not accustomed to seeing daily. It was cool! We saw a little wood frog, a brown thrasher and a few butterflies but not much else in terms of fauna. It was a holiday Monday, so the park was busy but the roads were mercifully quiet.

I was pretty beat on the way home and thought that perhaps I'd be miserable today because I had to get up at 5:30 to go to the coffee booth at the market. But I feel okay today, despite the long ride yesterday. Except for this faint, lingering feeling of wanting to crawl under a rock and die. Other than that, and a slightly sore cycling ass, everything is a-okay.