Inch by inch, row by row

Making my father's garden grow.

If you’re 68 years old and you have a living parent, you count yourself lucky. And if your parent is still robust enough to till, plant, water, weed, and harvest a vegetable garden, well, that’s something special.

Or so I thought before I spent three hours kneeling in the dirt, digging holes and filling them up again under said parent’s watchful eye.

Dad is 98. A retired newspaper journalist, he’s been a dedicated gardener all his life. He’s especially fond of tomatoes and peppers. So that’s what we planted last week, several varieties, in the 10-foot-square garden plot he tends at his retirement community in Ohio.

Dad’s in enviable health for his age, but he has a bad knee and a bad back, which makes stoop labor increasingly difficult. So the family stepped up. My daughter and (soon-to-be) son-in-law drove down from Toronto for the first tour of duty, which involved pulling weeds and running the rototill. I arrived the following week to rake it smooth, dig the holes, and plant the seedlings that Dad had raised.

His role was to supervise from a lawn chair at the garden’s edge, issuing instructions and pointing with his cane: “Right there. Now measure 24 inches from that hole and dig the next one. A little deeper. That’s right. You want to bury most of the stem, it’ll put out roots.” And so forth.

I’d like to tell you that I learned a lot about gardening, but I appear to be nearly unteachable in this regard. Digging is within my skill set, but that’s as far as it goes.

Still, when the plot was planted and watered, the seedlings did look cute and perky and ready to grow. My brother and his girlfriend are visiting Dad this week, and most likely they’ll be put to work, too, pulling any weeds that have dared appear.

While I may not have learned much about gardens, I did learn – again – that I’m among the fortunate few to traverse the third age of life with the friendship, love, and counsel of a parent, showing me how to age with grace and joy.