Pond Memories

Daddy’s Pond

My earliest memories are of gardening with my father. Our home was on the Bronx waterfront, with the beach as a backyard, so there wasn’t much space.

Daddy in the backyard

Daddy carved out a corner for a pear tree and another for a fishpond, complete with lilies, a turtle, and croaking frogs that found it on their own. We had a small vegetable garden and he planted roses for my mother. I once watched him dig trenches around the rose bushes and bury fish he’d caught off our dock as “fertilizer.” Thinking about it now grosses me out, but at the time I was transfixed.

Our Pond with some of Daddy’s statuary

I grew up helping him tend the outdoor spaces, as well as the indoor garden, with a miniature railway he created in a greenhouse that looked out over Long Island Sound. Storms took…