by Josephine Polifroni

Created on: February 22, 2009

My father pressed us all into service to pick rocks from the garden. My sisters and I were enchanted with everything about our new house in the suburbs after years of city living but my father had eyes only for the large patch of tilled earth in the corner of the backyard.

We moved in just after New Years in 1962, the middle of winter in northern New Jersey. We saw the garden when we looked at the house in the fall but by the time we moved in it was covered in snow. Everyone forgot about it except my father. He brought home books about gardens that he read all the rest of the winter. Scribbled papers littered the table by his chair, long lists of wished for seeds he planned to purchase in the spring.

He never had a garden in his life, city apartments all the way. But his mother talked about the big garden her family had in Italy and how much she missed being able to grow her own peppers, eggplants and tomatoes. These were at the top of every list my dad made.

Finally, the weather began to change. Silky hints of spring, a slightly warmer breeze, a smell of melted snow saturated earth, the palest tinge of green on branches, began to appear. That's when my dad announced his final choices for the garden.

Peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, naturally, zucchini, lettuce, green beans, spinach, onions and garlic were on the list. He asked if anyone else had any requests. My mom said if he would grow it she would cook it or can it or pickle it, but she had her eye on the rock garden and the rose bushes as her pet projects. My middle sister wanted carrots. My youngest sister wanted flowers, (she was only three). I picked pumpkins. I wanted a really big one for Halloween.

Then he told us we needed to prepare the garden by digging up the dirt and mixing in different things to help the new plants grow. We assembled, armed with metal rakes and hoes. My dad started things off by digging and turning the soil but soon realized that none of this was going to work unless we picked the small rocks out of the garden.

There we were, picking out rocks, by hand, so we would have more dirt than rocks. My sisters stuck it out for a little while but wandered off to find something, anything!, more interesting to do. But I was the oldest so it was my job to stay and help. I asked my dad why there were so many rocks! It was impossible. We were out there for the whole weekend since it was my uncle's turn to run the shop but didn't seem to make any progress. My dad couldn't tell me why there were so

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