Ponies Make the Best Gardeners

If you follow our street right through downtown to the very end, there are two ponies. My husband, faithful runner that he is, met them first and then introduced us.  (Just to be clear, they are real ponies — not the little horse statues in these photos!)

Usually, they are standing really far away on their little hill, but sometimes they come up to the fence and think you’re bringing them something to eat. In the rain, they look positively depressed (like us), but generally, they seem happy enough. They have a shocking amount of space for two almost-city ponies. Their land has a pretty golden glow now. There are lots of birch trees and evergreens, and the ponies themselves make it picturesque.

I don’t think the yard requires much maintenance since the ponies keep the lawn mowed. This is my kind of gardening. The ponies can take care of the yard, and I’ll just plant some flowers up by the house.

On the way to the pony’s house is a yard with a sagging shed and the wildest looking garden you’ve ever seen. If you were a homeopath looking for exotic herbs and plants, I think you would find whatever you needed growing there under the blackberry bushes. In the center of the grass, is the garden plot itself. Almost every time I walk by, I see them out there raking stuff and fussing over the rows of plants. They have all of the equipment – wheelbarrows, shovels, and stakes.

They look up at me, walking along the road, and give me suspicious glances. I pretend I’m not staring at the yard or at them. I find it extremely worrying that the most dedicated gardeners in the neighborhood have produced this little patch of crazy. I’m almost certain that if I took up gardening this is exactly what would happen to me.

The more I watered, raked, and dug, the bushier and thornier the whole place would get. The thought that they have real vegetables under there reassures me somewhat. Surely if it was just a patch of weeds they would have given up by now, no?

I think that if I could just master the part where you know when to water the plants and how to pick a sunny spot, then I would be a very good gardener. It’s just the basic stuff I am no good at. The really advanced gardening would be my specialty.

And I’d like a pony for the lawn.