with love and patience, it will grow

I was visiting Charles at The Razored Zen and this idea for a post hit me. Thank you Charles.

His description of the flowers blooming in his lovely corner of Louisiana brought back a most cherished memory, several of them actually.

My father loved to garden. He probably would still be doing it if his eyesight wasn't so bad. Dad has macular degeneration. It's a cruel disease that gradually robs you of your sight. He stuck with gardening a long time even though he couldn't see the finished product...

This is Dad with his buddy Walter (who passed about 10 years ago, wow... that long) planting flats in Walter's front yard

Mom and I always bought Dad flowers for his birthday (in May) and for Father's day.
Not cut flowers. Flats of flowers... and he would then plant them in the garden at the front of the house. Remember that cute picture of me about to head off to school for the first time? Dad's flowers are behind me.


The last years he planted some, he would have me tell him what kind and colour the flowers were in each flat and then he would arrange the flats side by side in the order he wanted them planted.

Not so I would do it... nope! He was going to do it himself (it sounded like my girl when she gets her mind on accomplishing some new and previously unrealized feat).

Dad supervising as Chicklet tries her hand at watering houseplants

Then with his hands (which seemed so big to me when I was a child), he would delicately feel his way around each plant and gently break them free... one at a time. He had patience. Frankly, he needed patience with me and Mom in the house.

He would start out early in the day, and my father never stopped until he was done. He had perseverance and an amazing work ethic. And I loved it when he would lift me up in his arms at the end of the day, and I could smell the earth, the sun and hard work on him.

In the backyard, he had a veggie garden... carrots, big juicy tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, leafy curly lettuce (which I didn't like because it just "tasted green"), and whatever he wanted to try out that year.

Mmmm Juicy!

I remember the smell that lingers on your fingers when you pick a tomato under the bright sun. The burst of flavour as you sink your teeth into that tomato and the feel of sweet juices as they dribble down your chin.

He instilled in me a love of the earth, of it's smell. Of how it feels to have dirt under your nails and a drop of sweat that tickles you as it slowly meanders down the side of your face, onto your neck where it comes to rest on the cotton of your t-shirt.

I can't wait to start that garden again... now if only the snow would melt.



My turn to be patient... I'm trying Dad!

"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it,
but what they become by it."

-- John Ruskin