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 Lois buys seed in the fall, on sale. "Canadian Tire usually has them on," she says, "maybe fifteen cents a package, something like that." The other neccessity, water, comes from the creek running through their property. A motorized pump and a length of hose running along the fenceline gets the water where it needs to be. They cover their lettuce to keep rabbits out. They regularly throw peelings and cooking water onto the soil. Wilda's tomatoes grow on heavy duty cages made of wire fencing, the kind that fences cow pastures. That's about all the gardening `secrets' they have to share. Wilda and Lois don't garden quite as much as they used to. Wilda tells me the carrots and potatoes we had for lunch are the last of the year's crop. They don't freeze beans or corn anymore, and they've stopped growing cabbage and white beans--"too much work." But they still can pickles and tomatoes, and they still have enough potatoes to last till February. Mine didn't last to the end of September. At one time, their potato patch was an amazing twelve feet wide and fifty-odd feet long. It's about half that now. Squash grows in the other half. "We used to have enough potatoes for the whole winter and to plant," says Lois."We'll always have a little bit. But not like what we used to have." What, I wonder, do they like best about gardening? Bad question. I've underestimated their practical natures, and the practical nature of their gardening "habit." They both look at me like I'm crazy. "Best?" Lois says, "Don't like it!! It takes Wilda all of two words to anwer me. "Eatin' it." But she also tells me this: "I'm not much of a vegetable person myself. I'd sooner have a piece of pie or a cake."
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