The Day They Sold No Glads

My in-laws had a fifty-acre farm with beautiful sandy loam soil in Flamborough, Ontario, on which they grew ten acres of flowers on a rotating basis, leasing the rest to a local farmer.  Early on summer mornings my father-in-law would take the truck, loaded with pails of gladioli that had been cut the previous day, to the wholesale market at the Ontario Food Terminal.  The money they made in that short summertime had to last them all year. On this particular day, my young sister-in-law had accompanied her dad to the market.  Upon their return, she wandered to the back field where the rest of the family was hard at work. “Guess how many pails of glads we sold today?”  she asked. “Fifty pails?” they said, hopefully. “We sold nothing,” she blithely replied, in the light-hearted way of child with not a care in the world. &ldquo ... continue reading