Middle Eastern Cuisine

When my father's parents retired, they moved into a house that was one door down from my mother's parents. It wasn't that they were the best of friends (although they did get on fairly well), it was just one of those happy accidents that - when Dad's parents had to leave the manse my grandfather's church had provided for them when he was a serving pastor and find a home to live in in their retirement - the perfect place just happened to be on the market...and it was just down from the house where Mom's parents had lived for as long as I could remember.

And so began the "Great Garden Rivalry," though it was, albeit, a friendly one as these things go. For years, my maternal grandparents had turned most of their ample backyard into a garden that supplied fresh vegetables for the table and winter pantry. While my paternal grandparents had had to limit their earlier gardening to a much smaller plot behind the urban manse, they, too, now had big horticultural plans for the new place.

That first spring, both of them spent long hours out in the backyard, double-digging what had been a passable lawn and turning it into soil ready to plant with tomatoes, peppers, beans, strawberries and such. When they were finished, there was nothing untilled but a small strip by the porch for a picnic table and some flowers - and the section where an ancient lilac tree remained undisturbed.

From that year on - until no one on either side could still raise a hoe or handle a trowel, who could grow the biggest tomato or who produced the most beans was the stuff that kept the world spinning through the seasons.