Reaping what we sow

I've had a great week working with Daddy on our garden. You may recall that I said I wanted to learn how to garden this year. I bought a book. I bought some seeds. I wasn't really sure what I was going to grow yet, but I figured I would give it a try. And then my father got involved.

Really my whole family got involved since my brother Perry joined forces too. First we spent all day two weeks ago getting the yard tilled. We had about 14' of garden ready for crops in my back yard. I thought I would grow some tomatoes, some squash, maybe some herbs in a pot. When I got home the other day, Daddy and Perry were planting the last of the tomatoes they were putting in my yard.

There are 24 tomato plants in my back yard.

After Daddy and Perry planted all their tomatoes, they realized they hadn't left much room for my other vegetables. So Daddy came back with the tiller and added another 7.5' to the garden. He also had to add more fencing to keep the dogs (and toddler) from killing the plants inside. And move the gate he created.

So Saturday morning Daddy and I started planting our squash and eggplant and cucumbers. There was a lot of hemming and hawing about what to put where, but we have a decent plan. We are going to experiment with some carrots too this week.

Like so many projects with my father, he does about 75% of the work. But I was there to assist and keep him on target and listen to his stories. It was a joy. He was in the best mood out there in the dirt that I've seen in years. He also said he wished he could find a job that was about as active as this gardening he's been doing because it makes his body feel better too.

When I stopped by their house this afternoon, I got to see Daddy's garden as well. That's when I did a quick count and realized he also had 29 tomato plants in his yard. While I counted this, Perry and Daddy were filling large pots so that Perry could add a dozen tomato plants to his yard.

Let me do the math for you. Our family has 65 tomato plants in progress. We never do anything halfway.

It was funny that my supposed new project of learning to garden has involved watching or helping Daddy do things the way he wanted, but I figured since he lived and worked on a farm he had more experience than I do. And I'm sure I'll have many years one day when I'll have to figure out a garden on my own. But for now I'm happy to play in the dirt with Dad and do things his way. That's what memories are made of.

But I did learn that Daddy has less than zero interest in herbs. So I still get to putter with some plants of my own without him messing in them. I have basil and thyme and cilantro and soon hope to have mint.

And I may have bought three more Roma tomato plants to put by the back door for guacamole. That makes 68 tomato plants then.

We never do anything halfway.

Waiting for Daddy

When my father was around 7 years old, his brother and some other kids on the farm caught a possum. They had been trying to catch the possum to keep it out of the chicken coop and were finally successful. Possums are nocturnal animals and while they put on a big show, they aren't nearly as vicious as they look. They hiss or squawk, and the act of "playing possum" makes their lips curl back and their mouth foam, but they're not really going to mess you up.

When you're 7, though, and your 12 year old brother is carrying around this wild animal it seems like things are about to get out of control and very fast. He was convinced they should wait for my grandfather to get back from the field so he could handle this fierce creature. My father fretted around calling out "Wait 'til Daddy come! Wait 'til Daddy come!"

(Note that in an East Carolina accent Daddy is actually pronounced Detty, so it's more like "Wait teal Detty come!")

My uncle teased my father for years after that. Anytime something happened that spooked him, Uncle Curtis would squeal "Wait 'til Daddy come!" It obviously made an impression since my Daddy told me this story 50 years after the fact.

My brother and I don't tease each other, but we both occasionally have moments of waiting 'til Daddy come. I know this has annoyed Rich in the past when I obviously am counting on my father's opinion to help guide me. But now that we have a child of our own, I hope that for many years Ian will look to his own father for what to do, even well into adulthood.

I hope that all of you have someone you can turn to for difficult decisions, or at least to dispose of the pesky possums of your life.

Two shirts

It started out as a chat about solo parenting. I was at my parents with Ian while Rich was away for the day. He had been up all night earlier that week with Ian while I was away on business. Our baby is incredibly good but sometimes just knowing you're the only adult around can be a drag. Mom talked about going out of town for training when Doug was little and Daddy held down the fort. She had called late Saturday night and no one answered because they were down at the beach. And when she called again on Sunday, Daddy said they were doing laundry so Doug would have a shirt for school on Monday.

"Doug had plenty of shirts so I didn't understand why they were doing laundry, but Daddy said the one he really wanted to wear was dirty so they were doing laundry."

While she told me this, my father was out in the front yard pushing my fussy son around in the stroller. This was partially because there is no room in their house to easily walk around with him.

Mom sighed. "You know, when Daddy was in high school, he only had two shirts. He used to lie awake in bed worrying about which shirt he would wear because they had different classes on different days and he didn't want everyone to see him wearing the same shirt two days in a row but if he alternated then he'd wear the same shirt to each class. So I guess he wanted to make sure Doug had exactly the shirt he wanted to wear to school."

I looked around my parents' living room. Within arms reach, there were probably two dozen of my father's plaid button down shirts hanging on various pieces of furniture. Ian had pulled several down on us earlier that evening while scampering around on the sofa. There are hundreds of shirts (and many other things) crammed in my parents' ranch home. My parents are pack rats.

Earlier that week I was reading a trashy magazine in the hair salon. It featured several half page ads for the A&E series Hoarders. One page had a crushed aluminum can with the text "prized possession" under it. Another page showed a shriveled up dish sponge with "sentimental value" under it. Seeing the ads made my stomach hurt and my face got hot with a complicated combination of anger and sadness. I've never actually watched an episode of Hoarders and I'm not sure I could.

With the show's growing popularity, though, I've noticed several writers casually mention that the clutter in their house has reached Hoarder levels. Heather Armstrong just talked about all the clutter in their home office that looked positively barren to me. And it's the kind of statement made for humor and to relate to most people's habit of keeping a little bit of worthless crap around. George Carlin even has a routine about trying to find a place for our stuff.

My family would probably be considered hoarders. But as we sat in my parents' living room amongst the piles of papers ready to avalanche and the sea of plaid button down shirts hanging from every surface I thought of my dad as an awkward teenager. After fretting his way through the age when what you wear seems more important than anything, I could see where the idea of throwing away or even giving away a perfectly good shirt would be unfathomable.

My father has shirts for every occasion. Dress shirts. Civic league meeting shirts. Yard shirts. Crawling under the house shirts. All of them came from the thrift store and none of them probably cost over $4 each. Would one of those experts from the TV show come in and shovel all of their possessions into a dumpster?

Don't misunderstand, my parents have too much stuff. It's overwhelming and even a little frustrating. But deciding how to get rid of it is heartbreaking. There has to be a middle ground, one without camera crews. Each of us needs to decide for ourselves how many proverbial shirts we need.