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My One and Only Gardening Experience

Jim LaBate
3 min readApr 16, 2021
Photo by Lewis Wilson on Unsplash

I’m approaching the one-year mark of my retirement, and I’m about to do something I’ve never done before: plant a garden. However, before I explain my lack of gardening experience and also my current desire to grow vegetables, let me tell you about my one and only harvesting adventure.

During the early 1970s, when electric and battery-powered Weed Eaters first became available, my sisters and I decided to buy one for my dad who grew up with a garden in his back yard and who enjoyed having a small garden himself. During the late summer when he came home from work, he loved pulling fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from that garden, cutting them up, and serving them with just a touch of vinegar and olive oil. I, too, enjoyed eating them, but I was never involved in the growing or the harvesting. Nor was I ever involved in the weeding until that fateful day when I used the Weed Eater for the first time.

The Weed Eater was actually a Father’s Day gift, and since I was home from college and hadn’t yet found a summer job, my dad gave me one.

“Why don’t you try out that Weed Eater tomorrow, and clean up my garden,” Dad said to me before he went to bed that night.

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Jim LaBate
Jim LaBate

Written by Jim LaBate

Jim LaBate is a retired writer and teacher who worked primarily in The Writing Center at Hudson Valley Community College (HVCC) in Troy, New York.

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