Thursday, September 14
My old neighbor Herman. The mere thought of him yesterday, and I could see him again in his garden, as if he were still there. His wide German forehead topped by a thinning shock of white hair, his short, broad-chested body supported by a pair of wooden canes -- checking on his grapes, harvesting his red raspberries, cultivating his Chinese cabbage, watering his lettuce, or just contemplating his tree roses from the perspective of his red metal chair. His deeply lined face, his icy blue eyes, his large arthritic hands tell all. Through his lot is small -- fifty by a hundred feet -- his ambitions are large. So large that almost every bit of his land is devoted to some kind of gardening, except for a small border of grass around the front and side of his house. Annuals, perennials, flowering shrubs, fruit trees, berries, herbs, vegetables -- something of every kind. A cherry tree, a peach tree, a plum tree, a pear tree, a five-in-one apple tree. Everything pruned just so.
Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season
