You didn’t bring me raspberries?

This week has been an extra challenging week in the Commuter Gardening saga due to the absence of my mother-in-law.  See, we are not just gardening on her land, we are gardening with her.  In return for our help with a lot of the “heavy lifting” (i.e., tilling, soil amendments, fencing, planting), she is the one who does most of the day-to-day gardening: picking, watering when necessary, weeding.  This would not work without her.  When I say “our help” I mostly mean my husband’s, because, out of the three of us, I am the slacker on the team.  And I say this without feeling too apologetic because I would totally carry my weight IF the garden were right outside my back door.

Anyway, during a normal week, my mother-in-law’s work in the garden saves us from driving out, all the way out, to The Suburbs, multiple times a week.  Sadly, she has been on vacation this week, this very hot, very dry, very hot week, so we have been a little crazy keeping up with things.

Last night my husband went out by himself to give the poor, parched land a drink of water.  His mother’s house is equipped with two rain barrels, and we like to use that water whenever possible, but it requires filling and hauling watering cans, which is much more time- and labor-intensive than just turning on the hose.  When he arrived last night, he set up a sprinkler to water part of the garden, but the rest?  He watered the rest with the watering cans, did not even think to use the hose until he got home, and I pointed out that option.

Due to this oversight, he ran out of time and did not get around to picking raspberries.  The raspberries we netted on Monday night so that the birds would not eat them.  The raspberries that I am not eating right now because they are still on the canes, dying in the hot sun.  Do I have a right to complain when I wasn’t there sweating it out with him?  Maybe if I hadn’t been lounging around on the couch all evening in silk robes enjoying our luxuriously cool apartment, watching my Baby Peace Lily Flower grow while eating all of his frozen custard, maybe then I would have some raspberries.