2010

Alright, it’s been 3 years today. My father went away and my life took a turn. I won’t say for the worse…or for the better. Frankly, I’m in sort of limbo area still.

Things have slowly become better and fallen into a routine. My job is stable and recently I was given a bonus, got employee of the year and nominated for employee of the year for the nation. (I made it into the top 24, but not the top 8 to get a trip to FL). Yay!... aw… :)

Other than that, I’m getting so tired of the life in my old home town and living in a one bedroom space.

I know possessions are really so important, but damn it, I’m really tired of saying “it’s in storage” and not seeing the majority of my belongings in almost 3 years. I guess it means when I finally do get everything back, I’m going to have one hell of a garage sale since obviously I don’t need most of these things.

But today, I’m thinking about Dad and I’d like to share another story with you that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

The year we first learned of Dad’s insane green thumb: We’d just moved to a house of our own (before that, we lived in apartments or townhouses) and had a very large yard. Dad was really excited and planned a large veggie garden. He made rows for each vegetable and went to planting. After stopping my sister/helper who was following along picking up each seed he dropped, he made each row. The issue was, he thought, ‘one seed, one tomato’ and sowed several seeds for plants. The plants came up, and choked out the rest of the patch. We had a tomato garden that year. And every person who came to the door, no matter the reason, got a bag of tomatoes. It did start the tradition of making vats of spaghetti sauce which we froze in the deep freeze to last all winter. He then got things under control, but never the green thumb. We had foot-long cucumbers, pumpkins which grew up the corn stalks, sunflowers taller than the shed, and of course thousands of tomatoes. One year, he made tiered flower beds and ‘wrote’ each of our names out in colored marigolds then wrote our family name across the front of the yard. We had so many people drive by and stop to look that year (and Dad would spend a lot of time outside, we think, just to be there to talk with them).

It still continued, even after we moved, and he established the landscaping around the current house now to the point of not needing much work other than cleaning out the beds each year. As I discovered the first Spring after moving back – the whole year burst into life on its own. It’s one of the things I’d miss greatly about selling the house. I hope I can channel some of his skill and take cuttings of two flowering bushes he brought up from his own childhood home (in MS) and was able to keep up here

I also have decided that it would be better not to ever drive by just in case it’s all been changed. It was something he was so proud of and loved dearly and put so much effort into, I would hate to lose it, too.