One of my earliest memories is of gardening with my dad. It was back when we still lived in England, in an old farmhouse beside a rotting orchard. Cows would regularly escape into our yard and trample the broad beans and plump tomatoes my dad had nurtured, but it never seemed to truly phase him.
Sometime ago, long before my brother was born, making me just five or six, my dad and I planted a cherry tomato plant. We dubbed it Sophie the Second and let it flourish between the round heads of lettuce and the frayed tops of carrots.
We cared for it and harvested it for years and years until we moved back to Australia when I was twelve. It's one of those odd things that creeps up on me - the memory of this plant and the afternoons I spent with my dad, caring for it with a child's hand. I often wonder if the people who bought that house after us kept them all, or if they dug them up or, perhaps worst of all, left those plants we'd loved to coil and rot.
But that's not really here nor there. What is, is that I spent yesterday at my new house with my dad, and we built me a herb garden in the old laundry tubs that came with the place. It was a really nice afternoon (albeit very hot), and brought back a lot of those good memories of Sophie the Second back in England.
I hope she's doing okay.
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