II’m looking at the tomato plants against the fence in our backyard, hoping against hope that this year we’ll have a crop of juicy ripened tomatoes to slice and make what my Aunt Mary Murphy called “Gloosters.”  (Please see the recipe at the end of this story.)

Good thing Mike, my father, planted them. They’ll have a great chance of survival—unlike the pitiful attempts I’ve made over the years in guiding seeds into weeds.

Truth be told, I’m a city princess. I don’t get sweaty, nor dirty, nor let myself be victim to biting bugs, wiggling worms, stinky compost, etc. I’m sure my potato-planting Irish ancestors are looking down on me now and shaking their heads, but kneeling in a garden plot for hours at a time and weeding and tagging and stringing?  Give me a root canal!

I will, however, buy everyone’s harvest at every roadside stand here in Pennsylvania Dutch country. I’ll drive my lot home to cook, bake, and enjoy the fresh flavor no store-bought produce can match.

Now my father, he had a green foot. Yes, indeed. The man was a government executive who wore a suit and tie every day—even after he retired! One year he found a packet of string-bean seeds in our shed with an expiration date of four years earlier, and I watched as his heel dug into the ground and he threw, literally threw, the entire packet on the hardened Philadelphia dirt. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork.

Our cute, perky next-door neighbor, Cathy, who was the epitome of perfection—so much so that we neighbors swore she could carve “The Last Supper” out of a stick of butter and that her perfume was Pledge—watched Dad’s moves. Her gardening gloves on, her tools laid out as if she were a surgeon, the plaid kerchief on her hair, she began to place each little seed into the ground ever so gently before packing the soil around it. Then her pretty watering can moistened each baby plant. Perfectly labeled popsicle sticks noted each plant variety, and Cathy stood back to admire her work.

It wasn’t long before Dad’s crop of string beans was taking over our backyard. It was hysterical until we got sick of green beans every night. Cathy’s garden didn’t fare so well. As a matter of fact, it was a desert of despair. To add insult to injury, my generous Dad yelled across the yard to her, “I’ve got plenty of string beans if you’d like some.”

Cathy was crushed, but my brother John wanted to cheer her up. He painted a wooden sign that said, “Cathy’s Farm … Pickers Wanted,” and painted each veggie and fruit around it. He snuck the sign into her garden one night. The next morning she found the sign and laughed and laughed.

Cathy and Dad were more than neighbors and gardeners. The night Cathy and her husband, Nick, moved next door to us with their two small children, Dad brought over a pitcher of iced tea and told us, his six adult children, “Go help them with their bags and kids.”

Mom and Cathy would sit on our front porch along with Dad, sipping Manhattans and chatting about everything in life. Cathy’s dad had died long ago, so my dad kind of took her under his wing. How he loved her little ones ringing our doorbell where he had Pepsi with maraschino cherries waiting for them. Cathy’s children became my parents’ grandchildren, and the love was mutual. We became family, the Doughertys and Tasciones.

On the night Cathy went into labor and left for the hospital with Nick, her mother watched their two children. We were on our porch, and Dad was so excited about Cathy having another baby. He knew her father was gone, so he figured he’d be the father she’d want to see at this glorious moment. Dad rushed to a local flower shop and bought a bouquet of red roses for the new mother. Cathy later told us he burst into her room beaming as if this baby were his own saying, “Congratulations! What did we have?”

Carolyn Margaret was in her mother’s arms, Cathy glowing and telling Dad, “Mike, you don’t know what this means to me, to us. When I wished my own dad were here to see the baby, in you came, bringing me roses, taking time from your own family… This means so much to me—I feel like my own dad was here, standing behind you in spirit.”

There were happy tears on both sides. Dad watched Cathy and Nick’s little family grow until he became too sick and went to live in a nursing home.

For all of his life—including the end of his days—Dad had a green foot … and a loving heart. ❖