I’ve been around a garden for as long as I can remember. My father is an avid gardener, and when I was a child, the entrance of spring meant peat pots, seed packets, and my dad at the helm of a lumbering rototiller. I’d watch dad care for his huge tray of seedlings, which while still germinating inside the house, would span across the back sliding glass door and block our exit to the backyard. Mom just loved that! He’d mark each pot with a white label, and if I wrote carefully, he’d let me do some of the labeling, too. I’d check on the sprouts daily, and before long the seedlings were big enough to transplant. Dad would guide me through gently placing the tender plants in the soil (you never called it dirt) and he’d furrow small rows for the seeds he was directly sowing. “Don’t cover them too much or too tight, Beck,” I can still hear him remind me.
