I grew up with a gardening Dad, a man who could take our 60X100 piece of Long Island and fashion it into the envy of the neighborhood. Ever the romantic, my Father would use his green thumb to woo my Mother and delight his daughters, with his creative side. 

Who could every forget the Christmas he made all the bushes in the front of the house into festive wrapped packages? 

Or how hard we laughed, when he grew cucks in a pot and hung it hidden in Mr. Aquevella’s apple tree, waiting for that perfect moment to say .. Hey Joe, that’s some funny lookin’ apples you got there.

 But I think of all the happy memories of my girlhood and my Daddy-The Uber Gardener, was the year he carved our tiny front lawn into a Love Note to my Mother. I can remember the excitement and little boy joyfulness that reverberated from him that day while we waited for my Mom to drive up, wondering and hoping she would notice the grass, now neatly clipped into hearts and their initials. 

You know .. they say you marry your Daddy and I know it to be true. My own beloved Kenneth Roy proved it on our first Mother’s Day together, in our own Home. It is always a sad day for a girl without her Mother, but he changed my heart and life with flowers at my doorstep, planted with his own hands in tribute to my Mother and me.

I pulled back these memories today, while I was puttering in my tiny piece of TEXAS and thinking of the cyber Friend, Kahn who encouraged me to keep up my digging, assuring me I would never regret taking up the hobby. 

That’s about the 3rd time he’s been spot-on. Someday I hope to have cuppa java with him and The Mrs., in a garden, in the Spring.

To the soul, there is hardly anything more healing than friendship. 

Thomas Moore
1779 - 1852