My Father!

I have learned to love gardening.  My father gardened, his father, his mother, and their parents gardened and so on.

My father was mostly a produce gardener.  While his flowers were beautifully basic; his produce was always spectacular.  I fondly remember my father picking bachelor buttons, small and vivid blue; long flowering stems of gladiolas with a varied pallet of color, and white Shasta daisies for my mother.  However, I think he loved the harvest of his onions, squash and tomatoes the best often piling the crops high or wide to take pictures of his seasonal accomplishments.

In the opening, I said that I have learned to love gardening.  Perhaps that was wrong.  I should have said that I have learned to appreciate the gifts that gardening has given me.  The rewards are beyond the obvious gifts of satisfaction, wonder, success beauty.  The gifts I speak of are the gifts of remembering, serenity and insight. Peace of mind.

Now, I find myself talking to my father while I pull weeds or create new pockets of color around the yard.  I point out new blooms and apologize to him when I transplant his lilies and Irises.  I know he is there right beside me, on his hands and knees -- always off to my right always encouraging, approving and still correcting. If I close my eyes, I can see him smiling.

When my father was alive I would bristle at his corrective suggestions, now I wish I had listened more. But perhaps, somehow he knew that I would discover the joy of gardening all by myself.  Perhaps he realized that he could give me all the help I really needed but what I needed was to learn to appreciate the hard work and gardening mishaps on my own just like his parents did, like he did, like I continue to do.