The Garden

In the little Utah town where I grew up we had a garden. Down a long, stony, weedy path from the house we planted a large rectangular plot with peas, corn, potatoes, squash, and a few other goodies. The soil there had been tilled and de-rocked by my dad for 2 decades and the composts of years of bygone gardens had turned the ground into a miniature fertile plain. My summer slumbers were cut short by the daily early morning call to wake up and weed the garden. The peas were plentiful and the corn was tall and thick enough to play hide and seek in.

Caleb and I kept a garden in that same spot during our first four years of marriage. Our two oldest girls learned to love picking fresh peas from the vine and shelling and eating them right there in the garden with their bare toes squishing into the dark dirt.

When we moved away, I had plans for a new garden plot of our own, but the Pittsburgh soil, soaked by constant rains, was clay-like and unforgiving. I didn't know how to begin to make it ready for planting, so I left it alone, and felt not a little guilty.

But sun-baked, moist Memphis air has given me courage and this year we finally have a dainty but happy garden once again. The last couple of weeks have given us our first small harvests: itty bitty but sweet peaches! Late strawberries, basil (we made pesto!), cucumbers and tomatoes, one yellow squash (plucked just as I discovered some horrible little vine borers destroying my squash plants) and a few early handfuls of blackberries. 

I am always a little (pleasantly) surprised when I bite into something grown right out of our backyard soil and it doesn't taste like dirt. 

It tastes like heaven.

Also along the lines of food and the afterlife: we made some strawberry jam the other day and I overheard Jane singing this catchy little tune over and over as she ate her roll with jam atop:

"Jam, jam, dammity-damn. I love jam!"

 You'll be singing it too next time you pull out the smucker's. You're welcome.