Elephant Bones

Yesterday I (Kyle) got home from work and got a phone call from my brother. We are cooperating on a eight-thousand square foot garden this year. We had lovingly potted seventy-five heirloom tomatoes, about three-hundred onions, peppers and eggplants who had sprouted happily in our backyard in a makeshift green house. For four weeks I watered them daily and constantly monitored the temperature and humidity.

On easter weekend we spent a day and a half building a larger greenhouse before moving our little green babies into it. They were all tucked away safe in the new greenhouse in Cody's yard (my brother.)

I got a call from him a week later. Winds had taken the wooden framed structure and flipped it upside down along with the built-in shelf. All of our lovingly tended seedlings got dumped upside down. "I think they'll be ok." he said, but I was not very optimistic. I told him I would be right over.

When I pulled up the twisted frame of our greenhouse stuck into the air like the ribcage of an elephant. My heart wanted to break. I wanted to be mad but what would that get me? I had no one to be mad at. The wind does not care who its enemies are. God hadn't conspired to kill our Brandywine tomato seedlings. So I helped Cody and his wife Chelsea clean up the mess and we repotted most of the plants. They spent today in the back of his pickup with clear plastic tarp pinned over it creating a makeshift cold-frame. Meanwhile Cody is building Greenhouse number two.