terra firma, agricola

I hope I remember those terms correctly. Latin class was a long time ago. I remember how excited I was, even as a teenager, to find that I had something in common with my Dad. We both took Latin as our languages in high school. I was impressed that my dad could still decline a verb and and knew much more Latin vocabulary than I knew. He was in the cotton business. He was a cotton gin manager. He worked with the farmers to help them finance growing their crops, and helped them manage their weed and bug control, before all of that became specialty fields of their own. Terra firma, the solid earth, and agricola, farm, are the words which I knew that my dad remembered from his Latin class. A week or so ago I had the great experience of working with my son, Thomas, to plant a garden. He took care of all the hard part. Tilling the weeds and making the beds with a rototiller and an old farm tractor. He also did a lot of hoeing by hand, and using a miniature blow torch to send stray weeds packing. I mostly did the fun stuff, planting the seeds and seedlings. When one plants a garden, one seems to enjoy watching and waiting until each little plant emerges from the soil to begin its journey toward bearing fruit. Of course you want to share the joy, so each in turn from my husband,through my children and down to my grandchildren have been dragged through the secret gate into my garden to watch this miracle of nature. They have all dutifully oohed and awed over the barely visible spec of green. Thank you all for appreciating not only the young plants, but the time and energy that went into them. Thank you Thomas for all you encouragement and labor . Yea,we have an agricola on the terra firma!