Hard work and horseplay

One of the places where I play tennis adjoins a large Amish farm, and we were playing on Tuesday afternoon while the hard-working farmer and several children were out there cutting cornstalks and hauling them away on horse-drawn carts. The stark contrast between their labor and our play made me feel both frivolous and extremely fortunate. My sole connection with the soil that day had been purchasing and planting two astilbes, two lungworts and a brunnera in my new shade garden.