They planted all of it. Every row. Peas and beans and onions and potatoes. They put the tomato cages up. They tied the strings for the green beans.
When I brought Dad home from the hospital, he stood on the back porch for a long time looking out at the garden. At all those neat rows. All that dark, turned earth, already sprouting green.
“Well,” he said. His voice was shaking. “Would you look at that.”
“You’ve got help now, Dad.”
“I see that.”
He sat down in his old metal lawn chair. I sat down on the steps next to him.
“Your mother used to worry about this,” he said. “Toward the end. Who’d keep it going. After.”
“I know.”
“I told her I’d figure something out.” He laughed a little. “Didn’t figure on the guy who tried to get it torn out.”
This morning was a Saturday.
