Yesterday, my grandchildren, Nathan and Michael helped me dig the rest of my crop – boys and carrots make a good combo. N loaded them into a milk crate in his ‘jeep’ he’d brought specially for the job. Then we dumped them all and pulled off the green tops, with N passing me tough ones that needed cutting. Then M decided we needed a break and headed off to visit the tractors. Unfortunately he remembers a couple of weeks ago getting his feet stuck in the mud, and going down on his hands in the muck so he won’t walk ANYWHERE that looks even damp. Firm headshake and backing up. So we found the most acceptible route, and I lifted him over the ‘scariest’ patches. vrooom vrooom steering together time. Then back to the carrots.

N pushed and shoved the heavily loaded jeep through the long grass to the walkway, then we took a much needed time out for them to eat my homemade popsicles while I rested my back. Their dad and grandad were there, fixing a computer cable between the two houses (Jacob way up in the bucket of a tractor) (Sue was working on the computer connection from home) then taking down the netting and scarlet runner beans that cover my south window in the summer. We all visited while J ate a piece of my sweet potato pie.

Then N drove the jeep to the water hydrant, and we gave the carrots an initial scrub, laughing and rather soaking ourselves. I’d experimented with one new type and won’t do them again. They got monstrously fat. I was backcatcher as he lobbed the cleaner ones to the carton on the jeep. Then he pushed it back to the patio where Ian carried the carton of carrots up to my couch.

I thought that was the last of my assistants’ work. I set myself up with our blue tub with clean water, another brush, and a clean container. Carrots on one side, water on the other. Michael picked up one carrot, walked carefully around my couch and my splayed boots and gleefully splashed it into the water, returning for another. Nathan scrubbed diligently, then put that carrot into the container. The assembly line didn’t need me! I took the filled container inside, explaining I was going to sort them in the sink into good shaped ones to keep and deformed ones to be put through the grating machine. When I returned, N had figured out a second clean container and was doing that sorting as well. Aside from the minor disadvantage of being in the way of splashes when M threw the carrots into the water, I was resting on my laurels, applauding my team to their dad and grandad.

M went home for lunch and N stayed with us, having the lunch he chose on the patio, then playing in a pile of sand. I told them both how very much their help was appreciated. N is 4 1/2; M is 1 1/2.