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As I remember it, my childhood almost five decades ago was closely interwoven with gardening experiences. Very early on I learned that, in our family at least, gardening success meant wasting nothing; and so it was that everything organic, everything that had once been connected with the earth, eventually went back to its place of origin.

My father was, in fact, the actual gardener, but by default, we were all very much involved in the various duties and followed his example without question. H e was sun-browned, stooped from constant bending to the soil he loved, quietly spoken. When he did speak, it was well-worth listening.

We always had what we called "the hole" somewhere out in the back garden. Invariably, it had been dug straight-sided and deep by my father, and was located in some currently unplanted spot that was discreetly out of sight so as to maintain the orderly appearance of his neat rows of plants. Into this void went vegetable peelings, crushed eggshells, sawdust, ashes from the wood-fire, hair from the dog, feathers from the plucked fowl that was roasted for Sunday dinner and anything else that would decompose over time. In around a week, the waste would be covered over and we would know that the worms would begin to do their part. This all led to a useful source of pocket-money for us children, because our worms were always the biggest, the fattest and the most luscious in the neighbourhood and in great demand by our fishing friends.

The next day, "the hole" would be located in a new place. We would have to ask for directions when emptying the kitchen scraps for the first time. We had to listen carefully because the vegetable garden was a complex place, then we were off, down past the rhubarb, between the asparagus rows, under the passionfruit arch, left at the parsnip patch and there, between the spreading potatoes and the neat rows of turnips, the new dumping place would be discovered.

"Never put a crop in the same bed two years running," explained my father as his planting continued, so, when sent out back to pull some tender carrots or snap off the young silver beet leaves for the next meal, we would have to stop and look around, because they were surely not in the place where they had been when we had picked them during the previous season.

After the rain, and most often at nightfall, we were sent out into the garden with a torch and a bucket half-filled with water. In the narrow beam of light, we would snatch up the snails that had rapturously

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