C-O-D-E-R-E-D

Finding innovative ways to exclude the munching invaders from his landscape becomes simply another part of participating in the landscape of life.
“We are never nowhere,” explains Kevin Sharpe, a professor at Union Institute. “From our first environment in our mother’s wombs to the last breath we take, we continually interact with the world around us.” The summer I had a large strawberry patch was one of the happiest times of my life. My toddler “worked” beside me, both of us on hands and knees. I was glad when one-year-old Terza learned that those red squishy shapes tasted good. She quit picking the plants by their roots and plucking off the green fruit. I let her eat her fill until she fell asleep in the grass. Her exhausted sleeping form—back lit by the sun, which shone through a mop of curls—was an icon of that holy place and time. Within a twinkling, it seemed, she was eight and had been joined by two sisters. Still, Terza led the entrepreneurial effort to pick lemons and limes from our backyard trees and sell them on the street (“Five cents, please”), and a pitcher of homemade lemon-limeade was her idea. Little did it matter to me that the sugar and the paper cups cost far more than would be earned. The pleasure on three cherub faces was my contribution to the world that day. This was the true landscape of my life, sweeter than the scent of the roses along the neighbor’s front porch.

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