Strawberries in the Snow

One of my indulgences in the coldest days of winter is strawberries. We buy the clear plastic one-pound containers in grocery store, and I slice up the plump berries to provide the only sweetening I allow myself for my shredded wheat breakfast.

As I was slicing ‘em up this morning, I realized that one reason I like them is that they remind me of my father’s garden back in southern Indiana. My Dad was a master gardener. The son of a Professor of Botany, his own gardening was anything but academic. It was a heartfelt, sweat-laden work of love each summer.

Early in the spring, he would hire someone to plow the garden, and then use his rototiller to further prepare the ground. I am not talking here about a small plot. His garden was vast, with several rows each of the perennial asparagus, green onions, tomatoes, green peppers, eggplants, lettuce, rows of corn stalks, and of course the strawberry patch. Not to mention the gladiolus, snapdragons and chrysanthemums. He did not select certain ones of these each year to plant in his garden—he always had all of them because Dad never did anything half way. He also had some rows of persimmon trees at the end of the garden that would drop their fruit for us to collect and make into persimmon pudding in the fall.

Don’t tell anybody, but near the very edge of the woods there was a hidden patch of cannabis.

Dad loved the garden. He could be observed from the back of our deck after a long day at work, heading up to the garden to water, putter, plant, weed and contemplate. He suited up in gray work pants and a perspiration- and dirt-soaked white t-shirt, along with a bandanna tied Indian-style around his forehead to keep the sweat from dripping into his eyes. On weekends it might well be a full day of gardening with my mother occasionally sending us up with iced tea or after 5 pm sometimes a Manhattan. If my father made his own Manhattans they would be in a large Hellman’s mayonnaise jar with a lid to avoid accidental spillage. At around 5:30 or 6:00 we would be sent up to give him the 60-minute warning that dinner would be served soon and he should come down to the house to shower and change.

Dad always kept a saltshaker up in the garden, because there is nothing in this world more delicious in the heat of a summer day than picking a ripe, warm tomato or green pepper, liberally salting it, and munching it on the spot. Those who came up to volunteer for weeding and other chores would often be offered this as their reward and well worth it.

Dad had a stone gnome attached to a tree that overlooked the garden with a somber yet bemused expression. We called it his garden gnome.

He kept a shotgun on the back deck sometimes, because all was not paradise in the garden up by the woods, and deer, rabbits, raccoons and other creatures felt a certain ownership for the delicious vegetables. Dad would shoot from the deck on occasion when encroachment was observed. Since I don’t remember ever seeing any dead bodies I would like to think he just scaring them.

One of his greatest pleasures was to take baskets of flowers and vegetables to his friends and neighbors. He also made a habit of delivering flowers to various nursing homes and hospitals. His great generosity at these times is a joy to recall. The warm strawberries from a summer day in his garden can never be duplicated, but at least I can buy a pound once in awhile in the cold of winter at the grocery store and remember.