How I Celebrate Memorial Day

Time for a quick trip down memory lane. Two years ago, I decided to tear out the lawn and terrace a hill so I could have some garden space. Here's what it looked like last year at this time:



I should remind readers that while building said wall, we dug up a four-foot-wide section of porch steps, thrown in as fill. (There's a whole entry on it-- go check it out!) On my birthday last year, the young men from both Morgantown wards descended on my yard en masse and finished the wall. Medical issues prevented me from actually prepping the soil and getting the garden ready.

But not this year! Here's what the final project looks like:


Hurray! I have a little garden! Actually, a fairly decent-sized garden. It's my first "grown-up" garden, not planted in pots on a deck. I've grown tomatoes every year, but they've never actually had ground space until now. When I was a little girl and it was time to plant the garden, I always begged Dad to plant some flowers. He always said no, arguing that the garden was for vegetables. Now I have both. The top row is dahlias, snapdragons, and a lavender plant (English, not French, unfortunately-- I would have preferred French but couldn't find any).

Bottom row: tomatoes are the star! I went to the farmers market and hit up the heirloom tomato people for some seedlings. I intended to only plant two plants, and I stood there debating: red tomatoes or purple tomatoes? I saw a green zebra seedling, and I LOVE those, so I had to get one. That made the second deliberation even harder. The vendor helpfully pointed out that I could get FOUR plants for $20. That's when I saw the black cherry tomato seedling and thought, "Hey, I have room for all of them!" So, the final tomato count: one Cherokee purple, one super Sioux (red), one green zebra, and one black cherry. What filled out the vegetable row? Two basil plants, a row of bush beans, a row of beets, and an oregano plant.

Here's what I realized as I was digging ditches around my new little tomato plants: planting tomatoes is what I did with Dad every single spring. I know the rest of the family was involved with the garden, but when I think of Dad, I think of tomato plants. I don't remember helping him prep the soil, and after how much work I went through this week hauling wheelbarrow loads of clay OUT of my garden area so I could mix in manure, peat, and top soil (400 pounds worth), I have-- besides better abdominal muscles-- a new-found respect for my dad's love of gardening. Somewhere along the fifteenth wheelbarrow load of clay, I wiped my face and thought, "Why am I doing this? Are tomatoes worth it?" I thought about President Spencer W. Kimball's counsel to plant gardens. I thought about Adam being told to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. What is it about gardens that's so important?

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, tomato gardens are about remembering my dad. Yes, I'm getting tomatoes that I love to eat. I'm also learning to work really hard and really consistently for those tomatoes. If I want tomatoes in August, I have to water those little seedlings every day now. Most of all, though, I think about my dad and how happy working in the garden made him. How happy he was when he brought in buckets full of tomatoes and then made a batch of homemade French dressing. We would slice up a whole plateful of tomatoes and eat them until we were stuffed. When Dad retired and he and Mom moved into their dream house, they didn't have a big garden area, but they had enough space for tomato plants: 15 tomato plants. For two people. I think Dad would approve of my tomato seedling choices. I'd like to think that if he'd been with me at the farmers market yesterday morning, he would have whispered, "Why not get one of each? You've got room."

So maybe I'm too far away from Dad's grave to go visit for Memorial Day. I'm okay with that. I can water my tomatoes and remember him just fine right here.