This picture was taken sometime about 1960. I had made a point of mentioning that when I took one of my first pictures I did not cut off my parents heads. Well, this was taken by my father (Thomas Anthony Dowd) and he cut off a portion of my head. My dad had planted those pine trees, they were all aligned on the side of the house. They had gotten so tall that he cut the tops off of them. That was a sight. After the house was sold the new owners took them down. Probably thought they look crazy topped.

He loved to garden. He said one time that his grandfather (Thomas Dowd) had a large garden all the time. He said he was a nice old man. He would take his wagon to his grandfathers house and he would give his grandson vegetables. This was during the Depression and I could just imagine what a godsend they would have been.

My father had a garden every year I could remember as a child. He had the garden up until the time of my mother death (1995) I suppose he felt he did not need it anymore, or he was depressed and didn't want to do it any more. He did put in a few tomato plants, not the garden.

When I was a child I had to help with the canning. We would dunk and then peel the tomatoes, peaches, pears and snap the green beans. He also did cabbage, applesauce, yellow beans and one year tried meat. I guess that did not work out to well because I only remember it one year. He also made sauerkraut, the cabbages were shredded and stored in a crock in the basement. It had the most putrid smell, like something had crawled in the crock and died. The procedure was that the scum on the top had to be scraped off and thrown away. The sauerkraut was canned. That was the only time they made sauerkraut, seemed like the smell lingered all summer.

My sisters still both can their harvest. I will have to ask them if they ever had to help with my parents canning project. Honestly, I could not be bothered to do it myself. Maybe that is because I have already done that.