Every year my father and I plant a garden. Tomatoes, peppers, onions, marigolds, and zinnias grow in neat, straight rows. We pull the weeds that pop up, and we water, mulch, and tend it it all through the summer - cutting the flowers to make bouquets for the kitchen table or to give to Mrs. Murowski, our neighbor who broke her hip last winter and has to walk with a cane.

And every spring my father tells me about Mr. Bellavista and the summer my father was ten.