Raising 'em right

Thanks for all your help on gardening--clearly there are some expert practitioners out there among you.

I went back to the file containing all our past leases, and even though this latest rental agreement didn't require us to sign the waiver acknowledging a history of lead-based paint use that the previous landlords did, the EPA docs that were given to us as part of those agreements made it look as though the circumstances potentially applied to our 1970 home here, too. Add the fact that the terraced beds we inherited are full of weeds, hard clay, some concrete slabs, and buried junk, and in the spirit of wamnny's comment, we plunged into an experiment in planting root crops in containers.

Then at dinner Edith and I opened a new kids' cookbook from Uncle Peter that offers step-by-step instructions (and photographs) on how to grow various vegetables and fruits, then how to work each into a recipe. We discovered that the book's instructions were for growing every crop, including root vegetables, in pots. Of course the proof will be in the pudding, but at least I feel a little less foolish.

However the plants turn out, here meanwhile are a couple of heartwarming comments, one from each kid, that reassure me we're bringing them up right.

(1) I read Alice a picture book at bedtime, at the end of which was printed the music for the song referenced in the book. I started trying to sing the song, a Yiddish folk tune, so it was probably fortunate that Alice interrupted and said she wanted to be the one to sing it. She then took the book, gazed at it seriously, and sang out,

"Bright cottage years with pleasure ife,

The shortest, gladdest years a wife."

(2) Edith unearthed some old Glee Club concert posters, mounted on foam-board. One actually had been printed at Harvard, to advertise the joint YGC-HGC concert in Cambridge one year. It featured a cartoon of dapper men in tuxes juggling and beating up on bulldogs. Edith asked me to explain the cartoon, so I did. She was silent for a few minutes, then announced, "When I learn karate, this is going to be the first board I practice chopping."