Friends Along the Way

I gawk as I drive along--do you?

Neighbors, I'm looking at your gardens, admiring, wondering, 

and considering sneaking a start from one plant or another. 

*

One of my Garden Friends Along the Way, 

I know she would be my friend if we ever met, 

has a plastic chair in her carefully kept vegetable garden. 

She moves it around to face the corn, then angles it toward the green beans.

The cheap green chair has been in the middle of the watermelon vines 

and at the end of a long row of yellow and orange marigolds. 

I love that this gardener doesn't only work in the garden, but sits in it, too.

I imagine her savoring the way her vegetables grow--

all that pushing and shoving, some leaping skyward while

others grasp for a bigger patch of earth. 

She was out there once, when I was driving home, along my everyday route. 

You know I swerved when I saw her sitting in her chair. 

But I didn't stop. 

I didn't pull into her driveway and compliment 

her thoughtful and clever use of the garden chair. I probably should have.

But I honked and waved like crazy. 

*I had this old chair in my own garden some years ago, just for some garden structure. 

It lasted one growing season and fell to bits in a wind storm.