Westminster Presbyterian Church, Santa Fe, NM March 14, 2010
Fourth Sunday of Lent.
“Son, you've got a problem... I can help, call me.” That was the message Trasie's grandfather --affectionately known as Paw Paw Dan--left on my phone one late afternoon Spring of 2005. Trasie and I had been working outside all day, in what was our first attempt at planting our own vegetable garden. See, Paw Paw grew up on a farm. And everywhere he went in his life, including a large part of his adult life in Fort Bliss, the base outside of El Paso, Tx, PawPaw always kept amazing gardens...tomatoes, squash, beans, eggplants, cucumbers, lettuce, collard greens, okra, turnips...If it would grow, he would grow it and he did it until the day he died. He loved it.
He hand wrote for us a how to plant and harvest his favorite crops; so we had to try it out. (Pictures and journal)
But, it wasn't as easy as he made it sound. We called him a lot while working in the garden: What kind of seeds? What about the dirt? What about the frost date?
He always had the answer. But I had to be ready. If I asked a question that he had already answered, even if he had told me weeks or months earlier, he would say, “SON, You're not listening.”
He loved that we were getting into it, carrying on this legacy, and so that's why I got the phone call that one afternoon. "You've got a problem...I can help.” Turns out, I did have a problem and he helped!
How many of your parents or grandparents had a garden? Or even a farm?
