Planting day, a week after our usual last-frost date. Around St. Cloud that's the middle of May, give or take, and I've lost tomatoes to a late frost often enough not to push it.

Jimmie is at the far end with the rototiller, in his cloud of dust, and I'm on my knees in the front setting in tomatoes with the flat beside me. I plant them deep, right up to the first leaves, because they'll put out roots all along the buried stem. The maple has just leafed out. Everything smells like dirt.

Our son Jon happened to stop by, and somebody who stops by on planting day gets handed a camera or a hoe. He took the camera.