growing curious: why i love my husband...

This morning, D took E rollerskating at Oaks Park. Can you imagine having your dad take you rollerskating? I can't. I love and miss my dad, but he never did things like that.

Afterwards, D thought they would head over to the farm store to get some baby chicks. Can you imagine being 5 years old and going with your dad to the farm store to get baby chicks?

I really love D.

This morning, while I've been alone at home (don't feel very well -- tired from the digging and other things), I've been thinking about how well D and I complement one another with our gardening skills. He's patient with the process of propagating starts. He's good at testing the soil and mixing amendments so that they work well for us. He's been building the coop almost single-handedly (thanks again, JL and S). He brings me tractor-fuls of compost whenever I ask and dumps them right where I want them to be.

He would hate to be digging, and that's why I'm doing it, and I don't care that I'm doing it because I know he would hate it. You know? He would last 10 minutes with that job, and I've been doing it for a month. I'm really tuned into the plants themselves and am good at direct sowing. I'm sensitive to what a plant might need while it's growing in order to improve its flavor. He pays attention to broad trends in the garden and takes the time during my witching hours (late afternoon/eve when I'm making dinner and feeling cranky) to spray horticultural oils out on the fruit trees and stuff. (I have never sprayed horticultural oil in my life.)

He and I do different kinds of research. He researched coop structure, basic chicken requirements, and spent an entire season planning out the coop before he started it. I researched coop design and different breeds of chickens in order to find some that might work for us here.

Sometimes I'm amazed by how well we work together. I couldn't do Curious Farm without him. But, mostly, I can't imaging raising E without him. He is such a good dad.