Friends and Potatoes

It is time to harvest the potatoes, and so out to the garden I went with hat and shovel in hand. I started digging to see how the potatoes had grown this year. I was pleased to see how well they had done. They ranged in size from small to huge. I bought seed potatoes last spring and cut each potato into pieces. It is important to have at least 2 or 3 eyes in each cut piece so that the new potato plant will grow. Each potato depending on it’s size when cut will make 6 or 8 new plants. In the spring time I prepared the soil and made my rows so I could plant the potatoes. This year I made waves for my rows and I raked the soil into hills to plant the potatoes. I watch and tended my garden and watered regularly. Soon each new potato sprouted and began to grow and thrive. There were weeds that grew and I had to remove them to allow the plants to grow. The plants matured and soon flowered with fragrant blossoms. The bees were busy pollenating the potatoes and I knew that I would soon be able to dig new potatoes. My peas were late and so the traditional new potatoes and peas dinner was postponed until later in the summer. I spent all day yesterday digging those potatoes, cleaning, sorting, and storing them in my cellar. I threw out the ones that had been frozen from an early frost several weeks ago. Some were spoiled and I knew that if I put the bad ones with the good ones, that the bad potatoes would spoil the good ones. Last night as I was resting and checking my email, I read an email from a “friend” who was asking to be my friend on facebook.   He was one of my childhood friends and we had spent many good times enjoying camping and scouting as boys. As we grew older and entered high school, we drifted apart. He and I had different interests.  I went down my path, and he, his. Over the years, we ran into each other occasionally, but the distance was still there. Our friendship was not maturing and growing, but becoming distanced and strained. It has been over 40 years that I have known this “friend” and so I felt some connection and loyalty. 6 months ago he had requested to be a friend on facebook and I had accepted the request. It only took a few weeks to see that he was not my friend at all. There were unkind opinions expressed by him, unfriendly comments, and I felt like a target. One day I noticed that he had unfriended me. So, a couple of weeks ago when he asked to be my friend again, I chose this time not to friend him. I sent a note to him explaining why. When I read his email, I was surprised at his negative response, but only a little. My “friend” reminds me of the potatoes that I had to throw out. They all started out with the same opportunity to grow and mature into new and thriving plants but somewhere during the season disease or stress cause the potatoes to develop poorly, making them unusable. Friends are like potatoes. We need to dig, clean and sort through our potatoes knowing which are good for us and knowing those which will make our lives diseased. Sometimes even with all our efforts, potatoes get diseased and we are not able to help them. It is then that we have to make a choice, separate the potato and allow the rest to thrive or keep the disease and harm the harvest. I had a good harvest this year. I only had to throw out a few potatoes. I was able to share with neighbors and I have ample to keep me through the winter.   I hope that I will be a good friend and “spud” to all my friends who have helped me through my seasons. 

To be a friend that is worth saving ...that is my goal