Carried Away

There won't be many more days this year when I can walk up to my garden and harvest some of the vegetables I have growing there, and this afternoon seemed like a great time to do just that. It was 77 degrees and sunny with a light breeze when I headed up Superman Hill on foot. Once to the top of the hill I spun the padlock and stepped into the community garden, which I had all to myself, unless you count the goldfinches and crows. 

I weeded a bit and cleaned out the tall, bare corn and okra stalks. I picked the last two pumpkins, got most of the shell beans, some of my favorite little peppers, 2 quarts of rainbow cherry tomatoes and at least five pounds of tomatoes. When it was time to go, I realized that I was overambitious in my reaping-- the thirty or so pounds of produce would not fit in my carrying bag. I repacked a bit and headed home with 20 pounds on my shoulder and a bag of beans and a pumpkin in the other hand. 

I hadn't gone far when I began to regret my decision to not just walk home and come back in the car to pick up my harvest. Still, I soldiered on, mostly because it would have been uphill to return to the garden, shifting the bags and the pumpkins a couple of times until I reached the halfway point at the bottom of the hill. There I found my solution-- an ebike docked in the bikeshare station just ahead. 

I was so eager to drop my load that practically skipped over. Before I unlocked the bike, though, I had to figure out the cargo situation. In the end I strapped the pumpkin and beans to the front basket with the built in bungee and balanced the big bag back on my shoulder. Then shifting my weight to keep the bike steady, I teetered and tottered and then zipped right on home, where I delivered my bounty. 

And I was just considering a quick little pedal-assisted ride when I received a text that my bike's battery was low, so I sped out of the complex, up the other big hill, and around the corner to surrender it to the nearest station. 

Oh, I was a little disappointed I didn't get more of a ride, but there was definitely a satisfied spring in my step as I jogged home to my vegetables.