What I Was Afraid to Tell

So I read the Solvay book's treatise (OG gardening on Martha's Vineyard) about the benefits of urine as a fertilizer in the garden. Human urine, amongst others. The author points out, quite rationally, that we are simply dispatching with one of our greatest natural resources while using loads of energy to do so. I thought about that.

Being a garden addict, I have found myself more and more reluctant to go inside to pee. So now I eat, sleep and even pee in the garden. During the winter, it's a challenge to find a green screen. But now, spring is here, and the raspberry canes are three feet tall. Which is not quite tall enough. Hence, when I crouched next to them in a hidden pathway corner, I thought to myself that they themselves, could use the fertilizer.

I hid a blue bucket in the corner of my "sanctuary" garden and began to collect a sample for my own pilot program. I didn't tell anyone. Not even Seda. Frankly, I thought it was rather over the top and expected that my neighbors might really wonder (as in, "Yes! I fertilize with my own urine -- would you care for a salad with lunch?").

I shared the news very quietly by phone to my best girlfriend in town. She's known to be conservative on many points. "You're whispering this because you don't want your boys going around the garden, peeing randomly?" she asked.

"Oh no. I encourage that. I guess I don't want them to know about it so they won't put it into any new-fangled 'potion' that they offer as samples to the neighborhood."

She laughed. And I realized that I worried about both telling and not telling the kids about what I was up to.

Then, this morning, the universe gave me another gentle nudge. I overheard the boys talking about the younger's "job" to make a habitat for the latex frog they were having trouble sharing. Younger brother went outside and got busy. I sighed with relief and kept gardening; another conflict resolved without intervention.

Then I came around the corner and saw my blue bucket with stones and branches carefully arranged in the existing "pond."

I had some explaining to do.