Humidity made the air look hazy and my lungs feel airless. Early afternoon sunshine burned into my skin like a laser beam. Sweat poured out of my pores so fast, I felt the sensation of salty sweat tickling my skin as it gushed out. Glancing around my garden, I tried to remember all the garden products I had signed up to show at the Central Wisconsin Fair in Marshfield, Wisconsin.

Green beans were on my list. My goal was to find ten beans that were straight and identical in size. I stopped to think, “Did the entry form say ten, or twelve?” I was certain that I only needed one eggplant and for the tomatoes: three green ones, three ripe ones, and three heirlooms. Thankfully, I’d dug the potatoes for my entry, and harvested the onions yesterday. Finding identical sets of everything isn’t an easy job. Sometimes it is even impossible. Under my breath I mumbled, “I hate fair entry day!”

Eventually, I moved on to working my way around the yard to cut the flowers I planned to enter. The easiest to gather were three hydrangea blossoms, so I started there. When I eventually returned to my house, I placed my armful of cut flowers into the many vases required and began to gather up certain potted house plants. My variegated-leaf hoya plant was in bloom. That was something not every plant lover gets to see very often.

Jars of canned goods and crafts I’d worked on through the year covered the dining table. I had gathered them and fastened entry tags to each one last night. With everything assembled, it was now time to pack everything into my car.

By the time I arrived at the fairgrounds, I was a frazzled, sweaty mess, and I still had to unload the car and deliver the right entries to right department for them to be displayed. As I went to work, it occurred to me that every year, fair entry day was always hot and humid. And every year I hated the miserable day and the rush to bring everything, conforming to all the rules. The irony was that by the last day of the fair, the nights were often very cool.

I started to enter things at the fair after my husband died. I liked going to the fair but didn’t like paying a gate fee every time I attended. People who enter items to be judged pay an entry fee but are given a free pass to attend every day the fair is in town. If an entry earns a ribbon, a small monetary prize is given. My goal was to earn my entry fee back, and I always did.

One year, a local plant nursery held “The Largest Weed” contest. The winner would receive a gift certificate from the nursery. The rules were simple. The weed brought in must come from the entrant’s yard. It would be judged by height and width and had to be something you didn’t want to grow there. I knew I had to enter this contest; my yard was filled with nasty weeds.

At home, I went around inspecting weeds. The burdock plants were just shy of my height and bushy. But I knew I could come up with something better than that. The ragweed patch stood taller than me, but each plant was like a tall, thin man. Same thing with the goldenrod patch. When I spotted the largest weed in my yard, I immediately knew it was the one to enter.

Wild grape vines try to smother the trees south of my house. My husband and I had cut and pulled down some of them from time to time. Some were old, with branches that were as big as one of my wrists. I selected a smaller vine; its stem wasn’t much bigger than a soda straw. Being a young vine, I was able to pull it out of the treetop because it was only about 25 feet long. I rolled it up into a large, leafy ball and took it with me to the fair.

I won the contest hands down. One man who brought in a massive burdock bush objected loudly. “Wild grapevines don’t count as a weed!’ The judge stuck to his verdict. The loser shouted, “But that isn’t fair!”

Attempting to make peace, the judge announced, “Next year we will reword the contest rules to exclude vines.”

I don’t think Big Burdock Man was mollified. He looked very angry. I quickly disappeared into the crowd after accepting the gift certificate, hoping he would get over his loss and forget who I was.

By bringing in the grape vine to enter the contest, I’d experienced an entirely different kind of entry day heat than I’d ever had before. Somehow, the heat of Burdock Man’s anger felt hotter than any August afternoon humidity and sunshine that I’d ever felt.

Next week: (part two) The Cursed Tree