Time: Starting with the last frost

This time of year most of our friends as well as Marge and I are in the beginnings of gardening “time.” One of the most important things to do is to put everything on a calendar. I start with two dates on the calendar. One is the average date of the last frost where I live as well as the average date of the first freeze in the fall. These two dates determine the time we have to garden. Here in Scott City, Missouri our last frost in the spring is around April 15 and our first freeze in the fall is around October 13. These are approximate dates. So we have about six months to garden which is our garden “time”.

Tomatoes take about two months from planting the transplants to picking a tomato. For fall tomatoes, which I enjoy, if we plant later then August 13 we will most likely run out of time and there won’t be any juicy tomatoes to eat. However if we plant the same tomato around July 13 we should have about a month to enjoy fall tomatoes off our plant. Just one date on your calendar. “Time” matters even when it comes to gardening.

Songs have been written about contracting a serious disease and the race to make the most of the time that’s left, to complete as many of our “bucket list items” as we can, to fill the days and nights with meaningful events and occurrences. One song I remember speaks about spending “two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu”. The fellow in the song had seemingly always wanted to ride some legendary bull. A bucket list item.

Most of us get married without a clue as to how to be a married couple. So we work our way through the first few years of married life. And usually after a few years along comes a little bundle of joy and we usually aren’t prepared to be parents. But we do the best we can with the experience we have. Hopefully we’ll have parents and grandparents close enough to help but what we fail to appreciate and take the time to enjoy is those little bundles of joy right then at that “time”. We’re so busy parenting and being a couple and making a living we fail to make the most of the “time” when they are little. Later we wish we could have enjoyed the “time” they were learning how to talk or walk or use a spoon or to love on some dog or cat. It was just “time”. But it was precious “time”.

Growing up I spent time with both my parents and my grandparents and never at any time did I realize how precious the “time” with them was till later in life when their “time” here on earth had run out. Maybe because I’m getting up in years and my time here on earth is slowly running out makes me realize how precious time is, time spent with our family and friends and especially our loved ones. We moved from Nebraska back in 1979 and moved to Oklahoma to study to enter the ministry. Since then we have lived at least 900 miles from our family back in the Sandhills of Nebraska. In 2019 we drove back to Nebraska to visit and spend “time” with them. That “time” was precious.

Back through the years I’ve lost dear friends to sickness of one kind or another. As they got sicker and sicker I knew their time was getting shorter and shorter. But as the time was running out what “time” I had with them became even more precious. A coffee with them became a precious memory. A meal at a favorite restaurant became a memorable experience, not because of the food, but because of the time we shared with them.

All of us regardless of our age need to make the most of the “time” we have with our family, our friends, our loved ones and our soul mate. Plan a bon fire, a camping trip, a trip to some ice cream joint for a cone or even a slow cup of coffee.