My wife jokingly calls me a dirty old man but she doesn’t know how right she is and how far back it goes. From a very young age, I was always getting my hands dirty and having the most fun doing it. Playing with dirt, planting things and working the soil have been a passion of mine all my life. Many people have said I have a green thumb and it just comes naturally. In another life, I could see myself being a farmer, wearing coveralls and a wide brim straw hat while driving a tractor bigger than my house!
My first start in the gardening realm, that I can remember anyway, was the one quarter acre garden that we had next to our house when we lived in North Carolina. During that time we lived on a 11 acre tobacco farm in the middle of tobacco country. We planted and harvested a lot of food from the garden and I remember days upon end having to weed the garden to keep the infernal North Carolina crabgrass and nutgrass from taking over. But during that time, I learned a lot about plants and how to make them thrive and produce while keeping the enemies of the garden at Bay. We planted all kinds of produce including corn, green beans, potatoes, onions, carrots and more. A very fond memory I have of that time in my life was our next door neighbor Mr. Judd. Have you ever met someone who was old when you met them and even older when they moved out of your life and that’s all you remember about them is they were the nice old farmer guy next door. I remember Mr. Judd giving us lots of advice on how and what to plant especially when to plant because he believed in the farmer’s Almanac method. Also he taught our family about how to keep multiple pests and bugs from damaging the crops.
Living on a tobacco farm, i learned a lot about managing land and the rotation of crops on it. We would often have tobacco just a few yards from our house and then the following year we would have soybeans in that same field to help regenerate the soil. As a young kid around the age of 9 or 10 my brother and I worked picking tobacco for one of the local farmers. We would get up very early in the morning and be out in the fields before the sun was up and pick tobacco until the mid or late morning hours when it was too hot to continue working in the fields. At that point we would go to the tobacco barns and start the process of sewing the tobacco leaves on sturdy square shaped and wooden rods, that we use to then hang the tobacco high up in the tiered trellises of the tobacco barn for drying. Working in the tobacco fields was tough work that I learned a lot about being a hard worker and being dependable at that young age.
In my teenage years our family moved back to the West Coast and we lived on an alfalfa hay farm. I didn’t get to use most of the farming equipment there but I was significantly involved in the loading, delivery and selling of the alfalfa hay. At age 15 I was going on delivery runs with the 3 or 4 Spanish speaking farm hands to help deliver tons of hay at a time. Over the next couple years I got real good at using hay hooks and throwing around 75 to 100 LB bales of hay. One of the other benefits of moving to the West Coast was that my uncle and my grandmother worked for a local development group that created a property called Jess ranch. Over the summers my brother, sister and I all worked for grandma who was the original horticulturist planting all of the accent plants around the property. I could not even begin to count the number of shrubs and plants and even trees that we put in the ground during that time frame.
The Navy era of my life didn’t allow me to do much gardening, however i did landscape the heck out of our first house. Every part of the front side and backyard were meticulously maintained and planted with lots of care. One thing I was particularly happy with was my mass Peony flower bed with a wisteria vine growing above it. During the summers when this was all in bloom it was very spectacular. Also during my Navy time I decided to get into the art of bonsai. I had several plants that were starting to look pretty good and mature in the constrained pots while I managed the top foliage with wire guides to create the shapes that I wanted. At some point, life got too hectic and I had to take a break from gardening and plants to focus on family, college and grown up stuff.
Once I got out of the Navy and we moved to our 2nd house, I once again was in my element and had free and total control over landscaping the entire half acre lot. I created a terraced backyard with multiple planting areas including a large flower garden just outside our kitchen window. There was a ton of difficult landscaping challenges that I had to address to create good water drainage as well as sloped access from the backyard to the front. My buddy Tim helped me one year create all the major structures with these huge, 85 pound each, landscaping blocks. We use these to section off parts of the yard and make them usable instead of a 45° slope in our backyard. I used every excuse I could to be able to rent tractors and skid steers to help move topsoil, rocks and other heavy stuff around the yard. After getting the yard structure completed, I added raised garden beds to begin growing vegetables. Over the years I’ve maintained, moved and added several raised garden beds to be able to grow all the same vegetables from my childhood.
Gardening and playing in the dirt has been a part of my life for a long time and it’s something that helps me relax. Doing gardening allows me a lot of time to think and ponder what’s happening during my life and I’ve had some of my greatest epiphanies while turning the soil. I am working with the recreational therapist at the veterans administration to find tools that will allow me to garden and dig in the soil from a wheelchair. I think this will be a great new opportunity to continue playing in the dirt.
