The last of the day’s sun rays reached their fingers through the remaining clouds, resting on the newly turned black dirt in my father's garden. Smoke from the neighbor's burning leaves floated into the patch like incense.

I watched as Daddy dug with his turning fork, unearthing a juicy worm already spotted by the robin loitering a few feet away. I wiggled my toes into the moist black soil until they disappeared, then wiggled them back to the surface. Sister sifted through the newly turned dirt, sorting the exposed rocks, keeping the pretty ones to edge the flower bed.

“Look here, Shorty. Know what these are?”

“No,” I replied, eyeing the cluster of white ovals Daddy had scooped onto the fork.

“They're terrapin eggs. We'll bury them again, and they'll hatch into babies.” He gently laid down the clump that held the eggs and carved out a hole to put the eggs back to bed, away from the row.

Sister and I poked onion sets into the row near the patch of turnips Daddy planted “just in case,” although he hated the taste. Childhood memories of an empty belly had taught him that lesson. There were two cotton plants at the rear of the turnip patch.

In later years, I would understand that he planted these as a reminder to himself, to remember the hard life in the cotton fields of his youth and to appreciate his white collar career. Although he didn't talk much about those days, I later knew that growing up as a tenant farmer’s son had taught him two things: be grateful for what you have, even though it may be little, and always prepare.

I walked the furrows Daddy had plowed, where soon he would plant corn, tomatoes, squash, okra, and pole beans that would feed us throughout the year. For a moment, the furrow became my imaginary tightrope as I fancied myself a circus performer. At the end of the row, I met Daddy just in time to grab his leg as I lost my balance. He rested his hands on the turning fork while gazing at a mound in the garden’s southwest corner. His brow seemed to carry furrows as deep as those he had plowed.

“What's that, Daddy?” I asked.

“That's the remains of a deer I shot last fall. That's where the venison in the freezer came from. Hunted all my life. Never had it happened before, but this one likes to come back in my dreams. Guess he likes to remind me to be grateful.”

He gazed upward at the approaching rain clouds. I reached into the fence row and picked a dandelion flower and placed it on the smaller mound marked by a large rock. I knew this was the resting place of Floppy, our English Setter. The world's most patient dog allowed her girls to dress her in Mama’s cast off clothes, including purse and hat. I pointed to another mound.

“Is that Furman, Daddy? Can he meow down there?”

“I reckon he can, Shorty. I reckon he can. Let’s get these tools back under the porch. Looks like we might get a little shower.”

Sister and I complied, washed her hands with cool water at the faucet, and climbed the steps to the back porch as the screen door snapped behind us. We squealed, startled by a clap of thunder. The pungent aroma of stewed tomatoes greeted us. Mama had canned dozens of quarts from last summer's harvest, and they had helped feed us all year. Daddy slid through the screen door, peeling off his wide-brimmed hat with one hand while the other mopped his neck with his handkerchief. He turned back toward the garden and looked up at the sky. He stood just a few feet from Sister and me. Then he began his ritual planting-season chant as the thunder rolled.

“Come on rain!” he yelled to the heavens, his voice thundering like the sky.

Sister and I giggled, huddling safely behind him.

“Come on rain,” we all yelled, holding our hands out to catch the cool, wet gift as it sprayed through the screen.

I took in the heady smell of the rain on freshly turned soil, the smell that never fails to remind me what I learned in the garden on that day—the essential lesson of life. The soil began the cycle of life with those ten eggs and plant seeds, sustained us with the food nature and my father's labor would yield, then graciously received remains when life was complete.