The growing season

Last month, the Youngblood family reached a milestone. The first of the offspring to say, “I do,” said, “I need to talk about plants, Dad.” Of course, he then proceeded to say, “where’s Mom?”

Smart lad, that Aaron Youngblood. He realized that, when it comes to things green and colorful, the family matriarch is THE resource of choice. A gardening “lifer,” my wife has forgotten more about plants than I’ll ever know. And when our son and his wife decided to landscape their new yard, she was at the ready to pick out items that would grow and flourish in the garden spot known as Waco, Texas.

We recently visited the newlyweds to check out their fresh handiwork. It was an amazing vision -- loropetalum (Chinese fringe plant) was mixed artistically with some lantana and several dwarf nandinas in a bed that fronted the porch. The unsightly fence that had marked the front yard when they first moved in was gone. In its place was an unobstructed view of a landscape in the making … with fresh-shorn grass and colorful flowers and bushes. Four months earlier we had been there, celebrating the fact that they had put a down payment on a house.

Now, we all agreed, they had themselves a home -- “their” home.

I’m not going to lie to you. It made me well-up. As a father, I’ve spent most of my adult life wondering if I did it right, wondering if I even had a remote clue about how to do it right. I mean, you birth ‘em, you burp ‘em, you bring up as best you can, and then you pray that you didn’t screw ‘em up. I took one look at my son’s yard, and at how proud he was to show it off, and I knew that I probably hadn’t.

Or, at least, that I had married the right woman.

-- Yale