Any Gardeners or Picklers?

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 Of course, being overly proud of his new tractor, Dad surrendered his competitive advantage by plowing his competitor's gardens. 

Classic lol.

After his girlfriend passed away, a very nice woman, by the way, a group of widows in his little town seemed to need the services of his tractor.  I found that suspicious, but refrained from giving him "the Talk".....

I am sure he appreciated your restraint.

Years after Dad passed away, Grammy G's bachelor son was the "Old Guy" on the road.  A vet and retired construction worker, he was a really nice guy that somehow managed to live a life in rural PA without having a driver's license.  He didn't drive illegally, he just didn't drive.  When he wanted to run to the Post Office or other short errand, he took the garden tractor.  

Now, during my working days, my retired, but spry Aunt would run down to the farm to do the mowing (about 1.5 acres) before I could get to it on the weekend.  She considered it exercise.  Most locals considered it elder abuse on my part.  On several occasions, I was reprimanded (cursed out) by known & unknown people for making my retired Aunt mow the lawn.  She liked hearing those stories.

In any case, one day, I took some vacation and ran down to the farm to do the mowing and save some self-respect.  But, I was too late, my Aunt was well into it when I arrived.  Apparently, you can use a string trimmer around objects before mowing instead of grinding the mower deck against the object and then using the trimmer on the grass that survives.  While I was telling her that I'll take it over from here (she had done the trimming)......the Old Bachelor rolled up on his lawnmower and handed my Aunt a bag of six homemade raisin-filled cookies.  For the uninformed, raisin-filled cookies consist of two layers of soft semi-sweet shortbread-type dough that sandwiches a healthy dollop of stewed raisins.  A poor raisin raisin-filled cookie is skimpy on the raisin filling and the dough isn't sweet enough.  

My Aunt took the cookies and said thank you.  The Bachelor restarted the lawnmower, smiled, and said......."Gotta get the rest of these to the Widows up town".  I gave my Aunt the "eye" and asked how long this was going on?  "Every week or so" .... was the answer.  "Is it always raisin-filled?" I asked.........."No, on occasion it's sticky buns" (Gooey Cinnamon Rolls, to the outside world)"  At that point, my Aunt handed me one of the cookies.  It was exactly the same as Grammy G. and my mother made decades ago.  Nothing was saved or substituted in the making of these.

I no longer felt bad about her doing the mowing at the farm........