If you have read some of my most recent posts, you know that I have been writing about my exploits and experiences after arriving at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and being assigned to the Joint Interoperability Test Center (JITC) at Fort Huachuca. I recently talked about my efforts to secure a garden plot at the Fort Huachuca Garden Club. Once I secured a garden plot at the Fort Huachuca Garden Club, I quickly learned that I needed to secure a method to transport composted cow manure. Thus, I went out and found and purchased a used trailer that I could use to transport composted cow shit. A guy that I had worked with back at Fort Lewis had given me a canvas tarp that I could use to cover the composted cow shit when I hauled it from Benson, AZ to Fort Huachuca. I went to the local hardware store in Sierra Vista to buy some elastic bungee cords to tie down the canvas tarp. I had already replaced the trailer bed in the trailer with the sheet metal that I had bought at Home Depot and I put air in the tires for the trailer whenever they started to get low on air. My wife made it my job to go down to the garden to water the plants that she planted on a daily basis. I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but I cannot grow a damn thing. Growing shit is my wife’s job. Planting shit is my wife’s job. Menial tasks like tilling the garden, hauling composted cow shit from procurement to garden, and watering planted vegetables on a daily basis were my tasks. My wife figured I could handle those kinds of things without killing anything and without getting into too much trouble. Cuz in order to grow vegetables, you sort of have to water them. It’s funny how that works. Plants other than weeds and cactus die right quick and in a hurry in the desert if they don’t get water on a pretty regular basis. They need water on a daily basis. My wife figured that I could handle spraying water on the plants because I had learned how to do that from previous stints minding gardens. And she knew that I knew how to run a tiller because I had operated our tiller when we lived in Tacoma, Washington. And hauling cow shit was just a matter of pulling a trailer behind a Jeep. I had pulled trailers behind Jeeps and trucks in the Army for many years. That was pretty much a cakewalk. Although I’m not really sure just exactly what in the hell a cakewalk is. In other words, it was pretty damn easy. Pretty soon, I became a fixture down at the garden plots. There was a guy named Eddie who drove a red pickup truck who had the garden plot next to mine. He was usually there at the garden plots when I arrived each day to water my garden. And he was usually drinking beer. One day he walked over as I was planting Peppermint plants along the perimeter of my garden. He asked me what in the hell I was doing? I told him I was planting gopher deterrents. He asked, “Gopher deterrents?” “Yes,” I replied. “They are also known as Peppermint plants.” “Peppermint plants?” “Oh yeah. That shit works great. Gophers hate the smell of the stuff.” “Where in the hell did you get it?” “Oh, there’s a German lady down the way that has a garden plot. She grows the shit. She gave me some because I’m friends with the president of the garden club.” “Can you get me some?” “Maybe. Let’s go down and talk to her. I think she’s at her plot right now. Grab a beer for her.” “She drinks beer?” “She’s German. That’s like asking if the Pope is Catholic. Of course she drinks beer. Maybe one ain’t enough. Maybe we should take the whole cooler down there just to be safe.” So Eddie and I carried the beer down to the German lady’s garden plot and we drank beer down there while we talked to her about getting some Peppermint plants for Eddie’s garden. Pretty soon, Eddie and I became pretty close friends and shared tips and tricks on how to take care of the garden plots. We also shared our tools with each other. We took turns buying the beer to drink while we watered our gardens and talked about the good old times that we hadn’t been having. We looked out for each other down there at that garden club and helped each other with our garden plots so that we would not experience any exercises in futility.
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