"Ooh, much better." Janice said, after Kinya and Keima removed the plywood wall my Dad had erected in the apartment downstairs. The wall had been put up for 108-year-old Grandma Tomari to help her steady herself as she moved back and forth between bedroom and kitchen, but it wasn't necessary after she moved out to the hospital/nursing home. In fact, having the wall there merely made the opening narrower so harder to move from one room to another.
Kinya and Keima stayed at home while Joyce was out teaching piano, and a friend came to pick up Janice and me to see her farm. (Yes, the friend who found and adopted the stray kitties and is looking for owners.) While showing us her fields of papaya trees, cucumber plants, and passion fruit plant (also called water lemon), she told us an interesting story:
The men in the fields around are helpful, she said, seeing she is a girl and knowing she left her job in the U.S. to take care of her father's land when his health failed. But there had been a plot of land on which she had been able to grow several mango trees successfully. A kind farmhand of the plot next to hers offered to cut the unruly grass of the area and unknowingly cut down all the mango growths at the same time! She didn't have the heart to tell him, of course, that's what he'd done.
I suppose scaffolding can temporarily support but if left there can be a bit suffocating. And you can think you're getting rid of irritation but do away with potential for growth and fruit. God tells us to just keep on keeping on anyway.
That farmer's doggy came by while we were talking around the banana trees. Maybe he knew what we were saying. and apologized, "My master wanted to be kind, really." We know, sweetie.
