As Daddy felt his time slowly pulling into the station, he asked me to start writing down his memories and we called them our “Daddy Stories”. I did write, and had printed into a booklet for him, 15 stories most of which were his. This was after his sight had failed but in time for him to hear someone else read back his memories to him and I suppose, to feel like he would not be forgotten. The following I write today, to add to the end of my Daddy Stories, as I watch another garden season ride by.

Near the end of August the garden, like our own aging, grows old, mature, less productive in some ways, more so in others. There is for me, the temptation to begin clearing the disorganized rows again as the picking and canning slows, but the garden itself is still teeming with life. About this time I also shake my head and wonder how those little seeds and sprouts in so short a time, became all this wilderness of blooms among crowded lanes of overgrown vines; and how grass and weeds appear overnight. I love how the drooping sunflower heads draw a crowd of goldfinches and intricately designed butterflies flutter throughout the zinnia, okra and purple hull pea blossoms. This is also a time of reflection; on the ones who planted, picked and preserved gardens before me, teaching me the joy of the process. I wonder how many times I’ll get to do it all over again, and I’m glad I do not know.

For the last couple decades of my daddy’s life we had made amends and grown closer. In my memory that nearness began to grow out of our shared interest in gardening. Sometimes on sunny afternoons, I would drive the half hour or so to his farm to watch his hummingbirds and admire his garden. As life goes, he eventually grew too old to do the work himself and he and his wife, Ms. Wanda, moved to our town of Murray, Kentucky. Here, he was able to drive out often to see my gardens, give his much needed advice, and take an occasional basket of beans or peas home to break and shell for me. When I returned the visits to pick up the readied beans or peas, he had them packed into round plastic gallon pails he called his ‘little ice cream buckets”. He would say, “now don’t even think about returning that little bucket; I’ve got a dozen of ‘em”.  But I would bring them back filled with okra, hot peppers and tomatoes for their enjoyment, and get to hear another “Daddy Story”. Over the years, I did keep a few (a smarter person would have kept many) of the pails with lids, which proved to be just about the most useful thing you can own, next to a pocket knife.

I do not truly believe there is a lot of difference in taste from one vanilla ice cream to another. As long as it’s not one of those ‘low carb’ or ‘no sugar added’ or some such concoction pretending to be good ice cream, they’re all pretty much the same to me. But daddy always, and I mean always, bought the “Dippin’ Kind” or, if that wasn’t available, Prairie Farms, which interestingly enough, also had to be in a round plastic pail. Once during the Covid isolation I called from Kroger reporting I could not find a plastic pail of vanilla ice cream, so was there another brand I could bring, to which he said, “No, I think they’ll have it over here at Food Giant”. Daddy did not have a particularly scrutinizing taste, but he did grow up in a time when everything that could possibly be reused, did. I am 100 percent sure he bought the Dippin’ Kind strictly for the plastic pail. There’s no telling how many uses we have found for those little buckets. 

I am down to only one of his little ice cream buckets with a lid, because  I’ve “used the far out of ‘em” as he’d say. As I washed it today, I was overtaken by emotion in thinking of the end of good things; like multipurpose little plastic pails, old men with softened hearts that want to be forgiven, and time…time for hugs and forgiveness. 

We learn as we go; it is the only way. While my amazing mother instilled in me the love for growing flowers and the satisfaction of a pantry lined with gleaming jars of canned tomatoes, beans, pickles, jellies and relishes, it was daddy’s love of growing and tending the garden, which I seem to have inherited as well. From them both, however, I learned to put the past behind, to fill my pails with love, close the lid on bad memories and plant the good ones; to be at peace. 

As long as God thinks I need to, and daddy’s little plastic bucket lasts, I’ll keep wagging it and my grandpa’s half-bushel basket to the garden to watch in amazement the whole God-inspired process of decaying seeds becoming fabulous food.  I’ll keep picking pails of peppers and okra, cucumbers and tomatoes, and pouring up shelled peas to keep for freezing and dropping broken green beans into it to guesstimate a full canner. 

Satan plants weeds from bad memories in effort to tarnish and destroy and make us bitter. I’m going to keep carrying those in my little plastic bucket straight to the garbage; then wash and rinse the bucket to hold the good scraps I take to the compost can, where they will eventually give rise to new generations of beauty. 

Life can leave you buckets of blessings and pails of problems for which we each will decide a purpose, and whether or not to make good use of them. I’ve filled my buckets hundreds of times over with useful as well as useless stuff; soapy water and a good scrap of terrycloth towel, cut flowers, fishing worms, good veggies and bad veggies, canning lids and rings, and packets of seed in the freezer to plant another year; scraps of iron and chain and rocks I‘ll never use; popcorn, pecans and grilling supplies; and I’m sure that doesn’t even get near the number of uses Daddy found for his ice cream buckets. I treasure the ‘late summer garden’ time of his life when he was less productive in some things and more so in others, with stories to tell, and little ice cream buckets of wisdom and love to share with his children.

“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted.” Ecclesiastes 3:1-2