“Underneath it all, I’m a farmer,” he said.
We were drinking coffee. It was still early enough in the morning that our conversation was a bit wacky. And when he said the word farmer, he dragged out the ‘a’ — I’m a faaaaarmer.
He’s got lots of cucumbers. We got five before the rain turned off the blossoms. He’s got lots of heirloom tomatoes. The birds are getting ours. He doesn’t have apples, but then neither do we, since the squirrels claimed all but three before any of them really ripened.
But — and I wish I had thought to say this at the time — we’ve got worms!
Soon we were back at our desks, he with his Scala, me with my PilotFish, both of us with our hot coffee and our subconscious thoughts of dirt under our fingernails.