Doing What You Can

I’ve got a stack of old business cards. Flipping through them, you can follow the many reincarnations of me. I’ve worked since I was 15 years old – although the jobs that warranted having a card with my name and title on it came long after that.

My friend Tonie and I once gave ourselves an assignment before we were to meet for lunch – we were supposed to each compile a list of jobs we’d had throughout our lives. Although I’ve forgotten most of the details of her listing, I do remember she had “artist’s model” on there – along with her early work in the apple orchards in Wenatchee, researching fruit crop disease. I had selling cars, driving taxi and skip tracing deadbeats on mine.

We were each fascinated with the other’s lists, and howled together at some of our choices…stops we’d made along the way, stories those jobs had given us to tell. She insists she took the easy way out – a good college education, steady advancement in her studies, a good solid footing in her field. She thinks how I’ve done things is more admirable – getting on where I could, scratching around for good benefit plans, trying to have something interesting to do with decent pay.

Hard to say which path offered the most challenge. And at this stage in our lives, it hardly matters. Everything we brought along with us stays with us, ready to be put to use.

I find myself so blessed to be where I am, right now, being asked to do what I do. Coordinating the programs of the WSU Master Gardeners in our county is, quite simply, my job – one that fits me like a good pair of gardening gloves. It allows me to teach while learning and puts my creativity to work by necessity. Because I need to fund the program, my business management skills come into play. Because there is so much to do, I can craft a flexible schedule. And because it involves an ever-changing population of volunteers, it has brought wonderful people into my life - people whose lives center around gardening.

One of those volunteers gave me the name Program-o-Gal, like someone from an action series. I’m no super-hero, I’m just a lucky girl in a costume that fits her well.