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Over the years I've lived in a handful of states and grown gardens in every one of them. Some of my gardens were lush and green, others rather sparse depending on the region. Yet none of them has overshadowed the special place in my heart for my very first garden. That garden taught me the meaning of friendship, love, life and loss.

During the summer of my seventh year, a friend of mine named Niki Scott sat next to me on the front step of her house describing a school science project. She and her classmates had placed white potatoes in a glass jar half-filled with water. Niki excitedly shared with me the thrill she had experienced watching tiny vines and leaves slowly emerge. Each succeeding day it seemed to her that more vines had appeared and the potato's leaves had grown visibly larger.

My friend's enthusiasm was catching and it prompted me to recall a television show I had seen on our local public broadcasting station about growing your own vegetable gardens. I told her what I remembered of the program and she seemed enthralled by my description, so much so that she decided we should have a vegetable garden.

It so happened that the day we discussed the potato and gardening was the day after her seventh birthday. My birthday was approaching in September. Niki was nine months younger than me. When you're a child that age everything is still new and fresh and wondrous. Summertime seems like it stretches ahead almost forever and a lifetime certainly must be just a few days short of infinity.

Except that my little friend, Niki was dying - a fact that wouldn't be revealed to me for several more months.

The house I lived in was my parent's first house. My family had lived in an apartment along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago and moved to the suburbs when I turned four. That was the year when I first met Niki. We had become best friends.

Although only a small ranch house with three tiny bedrooms, the plot of land the house stood on was big and the backyard huge, much bigger than Niki's yard. She thought my yard was a perfect place for a vegetable garden and I agreed. That being decided, we only had the daunting task of obtaining my parents' permission.

To my surprise my parents readily agreed. Everyone agreed that Niki and I should start work on our garden the next day after we went to the store to choose the seeds for the vegetables we decided to grow. My father even offered to show us how to use the tools he had stored in a shed. He had grown up in Dixon, Illinois, a small

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