Now that we have a sunroom, Farmer Gary and I notice daily we have several new patches of disturbed earth outside. It’s time to decide what to plant there.

We brought up the topic while visiting with John, Aubrie, and Cameron last week. Aubrie loves to garden and is always great with gentle advice – be it regarding fruit, vegetables, or flowers.

It’s always fun for John and me to observe our spouses dig in and discuss fertilizer, alkaline levels of soil, and planting schedules. It’s not that we don’t understand, it just doesn’t fire us up the way it does those two. (To add a third generation, I can just picture Mom and Dad sitting with us, with my father joining the conversation and Mom smiling.)

She would have joined in, though, when the topic turned to radishes:

Wishes for Radishes

Wishing for radishes
the ghostly Icicle
the merry Cherry Belle
the one I’ve never met
the Easter Egg

What colors
I’d love their look in a basket
this Easter week
bright and benign outside
frisky underneath

~ joan vayo 14 April 2000

Dad’s gardens always included radishes. I was happy to wash and slice them, but their “frisky” bite never settled well with me. (Although my high school French teacher made them sound awfully good when she talked about taking a chunk of French bread, slathering it with butter, and topping it with sliced radishes. Merci, Madame!)

Aubrie’s going to add popcorn and cabbage to her garden lineup this year.

Plus two Paw-Paw Trees.

Gary and I could hardly believe it – we’d just talked about paw-paw trees a few hours earlier. His late aunt/godmother, Stella, had two paw paw trees in her suburban Louisville backyard. I’d wondered if we should sneak over there under the cover of darkness and dig up the trees before the house gets put on the market.

Stella gathered up those paw-paws and baked the best bread (or was it cake?) each summer.

Now we just have to figure out who has Stella’s recipe for Paw-Paw Bread. Gary’s on the case …

Since I’ve read about Paw-Paws a bit, I must share that there’s an interesting love/hate conflict when it comes to deer.

Apparently deer love the fruit. However they detest the foliage, which, when crumpled, smells like diesel oil. Hopefully that means the only fruit deer (and other woodsy critters) will consume will be the paw paws that fall from the trees and roll away far enough that they would be too bruised for human consumption anyway.

Deer, I’ve also learned, apparently have terrific hearing. As we pulled into our driveway – well past sunset – that evening, a large buck was waiting for us. It sprang out of nowhere and dashed right in front of our vehicle as we approached the garage. Gary was cool as a cucumber, as always, but I nearly had a heart attack and took it as a sign that we’d better plant at least a few paw-paw trees here on our property, too.

---

“Wishing for Radishes” © 2000 Joan Cassidy. All rights reserved.

Please subscribe here: Simply drop in your email address and we’ll send you a notification with each new story.