A little story:

 I met Bride at a restaurant/bar where I often stopped in after flying back to Boston to decompress before facing a pending divorce at home. We passed, walking to the restroom, Bride and I, and she said I looked mean. I said I’m not, so we spoke and danced and fell in love within 30 minutes.

I invited her over for dinner the next night, and she said yes. I made corn chowder, which I make better than anything. She had a bowl, and waited to see what was for dinner. I explained that the chowder was dinner. She had another bowl, we drank some wine, and said goodnight, a little lost in the stars. I think she stayed over.

 I’d just moved into the house 3 months earlier, and had bet my friend Jim Flanagan that he and his backhoe couldn’t get 30 years’ worth of composted horse manure from over the bank in the lower meadow up to the gardens where it belonged. He said he could, and did. So we woke up over coffee to see this pile of composted manure, at least 8’ tall, three dumptrucks full, sitting right where I’d wanted it. Janet was a gardener. She understood.

 Our first real date was spent shoveling this rich pile out across the soon-to-be market gardens.  It took weeks. I expect not every marriage starts this way, but ours did.

 We were married in the horse pasture, The men and grown boys had so much fun they decided to play soccer behind the tent. When it was all over, I overheard a youngster ask his Mom on the way out, “When can we go to another soccer wedding?”

 With the newly rich soil we began a farm, and farmstand, and those were some of the most beautiful days of my life. Me and Bride, working together.