The Garden Variety

We have a garden.

Two 4 x 8 raised beds that the Big Guy built when I announced that we were planting a garden this year. I was just thinking about digging a place in the ground . . . but it's hard to do that with clay and rocks. The beds are beautiful and both have rims around them which double as benches.

Arguably, it's the first garden we've had since having children.

I say arguably because the children planted a couple of tomatoes and peppers in the shade at the edge of our woods a couple of years ago. And when the Boy overhears me saying we have our first garden this year, he is very swift to correct my error of historical accuracy. We did enjoy a few tomatoes from that small shaded patch, so I suppose it was a garden by definition . . . and by experience.

When the Big Guy and I first got married, his job took us to Alabama . . . the town was teeny-tiny and was 13 hours from home. 13 hours from everything we had ever known. As far as we were concerned, we were in the middle of nowhere.

Our house was an old, old house with a big back yard. Our neighbors owned the local Feed & Seed and they invited us over for dinner one spring night. As we visited, we started talking about gardens. It didn't take long for me to decide that we should have a garden.

I asked Tommy if we could borrow his tiller. He grinned and said "yes."

I asked what kinds of seeds we should buy . . . and where we should plant them. Tommy grinned and answered all of my questions.

Tommy told me to come by the store the next day after school and he'd help me pick out the seeds. I was excited.

The next day crawled by. All I could think about was picking out our seeds, carrying them home in those pocket-sized brown paper sacks and planting them in our garden.

For some reason long forgotten, I needed to stop by the house on my way to the Feed & Seed. Our driveway ran the length of the house, hooked around and ended at the back porch. When I pulled to the end of the driveway, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Tommy was in our garden.

He had picked out the seeds, brought his tiller and fertilizer and had planted our garden for us. He was just finishing up when I came home. When he saw me, he grinned and waved.

I walked over and he explained what he'd done. He pointed out where our corn would be popping up and how the pole beans would use the corn stalks as support for their long sprawling vines. He showed me the mounds of earth that contained our squash and zucchini seeds. There were tomato plants and cucumbers, too.

I felt so blessed to have been put on that corner of the earth.

What Tommy did that day was one of the most neighborly things anyone has ever done for us.

Tommy and Jo were just regular people - the garden variety. But they are the Gold Standard to which I measure good-neighborliness. Each time I go out to our garden, I think of them. I think of how much they taught us in the 10 months that we were neighbors . . . and I miss that we didn't get to spend more time with them.

Photo: Sugar Peas from our garden.