Among the things that my grandfather
loved, teaching, fishing, entertaining, high on his list was gardening. Each
June he would excuse his voice students until September, and he and his wife
went to their retreat, Arundel-on-the Bay. Every summer I was lucky enough to
go with them; and what a sweet deal it was for my parents!
When he wasn’t in the yard, Porgy-like on his knees digging in the dirt,
(“It’s
soil, son, not dirt,” he would gently remind me) then he
was on the porch reading about it. Books on gardening and voice were his
favorites, and his libraries were crammed with titles on both.
He collected rainwater in
always-rusting steel barrels because he preferred it to well water for his
flowers and tomatoes. He kept a
compost pit in the farthest corner of the yard, and would pick through our
trash for valuable additions my grandmother might have overlooked.
Once - and only once - he came home
with the back seat of his Cadillac filled to overflowing with rich topsoil from
some construction site he had driven by. As long as his plants got what they
needed, he felt it was worth the blistering response he surely knew awaited him
from Gladys. The car smelled “earthy”
for months, and was never again quite clean in back. But that summer, his
plants prospered. For him, that was enough.