My Father’s Weed-Free Garden

My father has been gone for more than eight years, but I think of him every time I work in my yard or visit a garden store; I still remember our Saturday trips to Hastings on Cheshire Bridge Road, more than 50 years ago, just to “look around.” From selling vegetables grown from seeds to neighbors in his small hometown in Pennsylvania to cultivating orchids in the greenhouse at his retirement home in Atlanta, my father loved gardening.

In my own retirement, I’m trying to follow in his footsteps. I spend many hours, every week, planting, laying pine straw, raking, watering and weeding in my city yard: simple, but satisfying, tasks. My father was not an easy man to please (and he was as hard on himself as others), but I think he would be proud of my gardening passion and the results.

When my father died, my sister and I distributed his possessions, as families do. Looking through yet another box of odds and ends, we found his old gardening tools. I remember the emotions I felt when I saw them, and, as the older (pushier) sister, immediately claimed them for my own. It was his wooden-handled weeder that I really wanted: the simple, inexpensive tool that I had seen him use hundreds of times, while sitting on a stool in whatever garden he was tending. I can imagine his gnarled, arthritic hand grasping the handle, just as I do now. Little things trigger memories.