Planting a Seed

More and more often I have found myself daydreaming about having and working a garden. Throughout my entire childhood, we had a huge vegetable garden in our backyard where my dad would spend hour upon hour roto-tilling, planting, weeding, and harvesting. My four siblings and I were convenient labor, and even if we were not held to the kind of disciplined schedule that a farm kid might be, we certainly did our part, though not without some grumbling. The grumblings were instantly forgotten when snapping into a freshly dug carrot, slicing a ripe tomato, picking and eating a juicy strawberry, or steaming just-picked green beans. It was something we took for granted, and that I now miss immensely. My grandparents had a garden, and my great-grandparents, and after losing my grandmother last year, and with my dad having moved to a Stepford-esque neighborhood on a golf course, the desire to continue that tradition has been a constant. Over Christmas, I was eyeing the fallow garden in my grandmother’s backyard. We haven’t sold her house, and most of us really do not want to. In all that time of working in the yard, I always thought I’d never want to do this as an adult. And yet here I am seriously contemplating it.