Onions and dish water

	Onions and dish water
Some People's Parents	Prev \| TOC \| Next

It was midsummer in Saskatoon. The garden was radiant and green. The onions were in bloom.

You've never seen onions in bloom? Maybe you harvest all of yours every year, or maybe you dig up the volunteers the next year. Onions bloom and set seeds in the second year. And yes, I knew that before I accidentally forgot to dig up all the onions one fall. And I couldn't just get rid of them. That would be cruel.

Anyway, it was a fine morning. I had just started doing dishes from the day before. Then I heard the strident tones of a sibling clash. My skinny son in his squeaky 6 year old voice was scolding his little sister.

"It's not a weed. You can't dig it up."

"Flowers grow in rows. Vegetables grow in rows. Weeds grow between."

"It's not a weed."

"Is too."

"Is not."

Whoops. Parental control mode ON. I marched to the back door.

"What's she digging up, Philip?"

"Onions. You know, the ones from last year."

"It's OK, Gwen." I said as I walked to the kids.

I pointed at the row of new onions, planted this year. "Little onions."

Then I pointed at the old onions. "Mommy onions."

"Mommy onions?" Round eyes greeted this astonishing new concept.

"See? Where it looks like a flower? Each one is actually a tiny little baby onion."

"Baby onions?"

"Yes, that's right, baby onions."

Philip bent over to take a look and reached out a finger.

"No!" Gwen was having none of that. "Babies! Don't touch!" She shouted, and slapped at his finger.

"OK! OK!" Big brother backed off, then had an idea. "Gwennies. Do you want to ride in the wagon? I'll pull it."

"OK." But before she left she patted the onion. "Babies!" She said importantly to me.

As the kids went to the yard to play, I walked back into the house.

The sink was overflowing. Water was running across the floor and into a heating vent. It took me half an hour to get the floor dry, and I'm afraid that after an hour more I still hadn't done much about the water in the heating ducts, so I gave up and ignored it. It would evaporate in a few hours anyway, in the dry Saskatoon air.

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