I went golfing this morning with my friends Doug and Junior. Surprisingly, I did pretty good in addition to having a great time like I always do. Doing better than normal is a definite plus. I think I did better because I decided to make use of a bit of the golf information I’ve received over the last few decades. Those intricate instructions, to which every aspiring golfer has been exposed, are as varied as those who share them. The important ones are shared by everyone. Those would be:

1. Keep your head down (I don’t because I need to see where the ball goes)
2. Keep at least one eye on the ball (I go blind just before my club hits the ball, if it hits the ball)
3. Keep your left arm straight (if you’re right-handed)
4. Keep your knees flexed (I generally wind up on my toes because I try to swing so hard)
5. Follow through (doing this is usually an afterthought for me)
6. Never use a pink ball unless you’re a woman (I defy this one all the time)
7. Always use orange balls in the winter (I use them all the time until I find some white ones)

There are a zillion other “rules” but I can’t remember them. Today I managed to remember the first five, most of the time.

Playing through the trees is, for me, part of the game. All golfers know that trees are 90% air so I just pretend they aren’t there. As a result, my handicap is 37. I’m one of only three people at the St. Helens Golf Club who has managed to maintain such a lofty handicap. It’s always fun when a ball goes into the trees because something besides the ball usually falls to the ground. Sometimes the ball just sails right through and winds up in a location far removed from where anyone would suspect. Other times we are entertained when the ball rattles around a bit on the trunks and branches, once in a while causing a branch of significance to tumble down. Today Doug hit the jackpot as far as nailing branches …

He didn’t really knock this one out of the tree but he hit the tree from which it fell, and his ball landed on it. So, in a way, that counts.

Now, about vegetables. Carrots, specifically. Until today I lived blissfully in a world where carrots were genderless. Then I was shocked right out of my socks when I went to help Diane make her black bean vegetable soup for tomorrow’s Community Meals at First Lutheran Church.

My job was to chop vegetables of various kinds so carrots had to be in the mix. One of the church ladies provided the carrots which she had recently plucked from the church garden next to the St. Helens Senior Center. Most of the carrots were your normal run of the genderless type.

Then I encountered these – two girls and a boy.

OK. It’s a MAN carrot, not a boy. Must be the dirt.