I have a gazillion photos of my garden. It no longer exists in the form it once did. My garden is now occupied and owned by someone who cares not to tend it. But, that doesn't keep me from dreaming or remembering or rebuilding the garden I once joyed to have. It was no secret garden. It was my sanctuary. Yet, I planted it not. It was no secret garden. It was my sanctuary. Yet I watered it. I tilled the soil. I rearranged things. I left it better than I found it. The beginning of gardening is dreaming. Don't be to quick to plant.  Plotting prior to planting is best.  Now the earth was formless and empty, in the beginning.

On a little spot of land in Tennessee; where the ground is no thing but fair, I learned to dig my family as they were. And what they were is large, very large. Back in the day, every large family had a garden, out back. And my family was only different in that, both sides of our family lived on the same street. We called this double garden duty, cause we had to pull weeds or pick greens, not once but twice. After harvesting all that we could from the family garden spot, Granddaddy would till and turn the soil one more time, for a bed of winter greens, he would plant right now, while the soil is still, warm as snuff. My Granddaddy was Pops to thirteen children and his grandchildren numbered, thirty or more. How does one man, find that one special quality in each grandchild with so many, under foot? I don't know, but he did. And what he saw, you saw and what he saw in me was my love of plain old dirt. So out in the garden, we would be, just him and me.  Pops garden rules, b...