Some year ago we give way through a bad patch financially . I had start out my first business a year before . It did magnificently for about 13 months … then I lost two out of three clients within a few hebdomad of each other .
At that point we were hire a house down in South Florida and the trapping boom was still in full lilt . Our economic rent for an 800 straight foot home with a 1/10 Akka yard in a working family neighborhood was $ 1250 per month .
That damage . I know it ’s not New York or California prices , but I ’m the solitary breadwinner with a few mouths to run .
face a major smasher to our hard currency stream , we had two classic choices : increase our income or thin our expenses . Since well - paying clients are few and far between , and it was the holiday season , mean nailing multitude down was next to impossible , we decide for the latter .
My Aunt Jeanette managed property for a little mobile domicile community in the nowhere town of Frostproof . We called her about renting a place and notice that a 1500 straight foundation house was available for half our current rip .
A major bonus of this move was that I got to love Grandpa Ralph . He ’s my Uncle Steve ’s father , stimulate us tenuously related through marriage . Ralph is a retired missionary who grew up in a farming family in Southern California , then spent much of his adult life abroad in the hobo camp of Ecuador .
He ’s also an amazing nurseryman .
I spend a lot of hour visiting him in his tropical backyard gardens . His place was two houses down and across the street from ours , so it was easy to slip off in the middle of the twenty-four hour period and chat about citrous fruit , wild Indian tribes or the insidious and not - so - pernicious differences between church service denominations .
I ’d tell my wife “ Hey , I ’m going for a manner of walking … be back in a few , ” and she ’d express joy . “ If you ’re going to Ralph ’s , I guess I ’ll see you in a few hours … ”
Ralph also built a food forest which I enjoyed before I even knew what a “ food wood ” was .
In his small backyard , he group together at least a dozen citrus trees along with Carica papaya , casava , Psidium guajava , avocados and even a mango tree diagram . you’re able to see the mango tree in the picture behind us . Those are not supposed to grow in Frostproof , which , despite its name , is not at all frost - spare . fillip : he acquire that mango tree tree from a seed he got from my biologic granddaddy ’s tree down in Fort Lauderdale .
I got to bring down Ralph during our late trip after not seeing him for about five years . regrettably , he ’s miss a lot of tree thanks to freeze and the fact that he ’s no longer to work the ground much any longer . The forest woodland is down to just the group of citrus tree trees … and they ’re not bet so hot . The mango is doing okay but never bears yield … and he fall back his fledged avocado pear Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree to laurel wilt disease or something similar .
I call back asking him once why his plants count so surprisingly green and intelligent .
“ MiracleGro , ” he recite me . “ You just integrate it up and spray the leaves . You do n’t even put it on the root or in the soil . Just on the leave-taking ! And then they call on unripened . ”
Then he blink at me . “ possibly THAT ’S the miracle ! ”
Even though Ralph ’s garden are n’t the crazy profusion they used to be , he has a bequest . His children follow God … he ’s been matrimonial to the same wondrous woman for 66 class … and he ’s always glad to expend time with a admirer discourse things that matter more than plants , frosts or magic fertilizers .
I miss being neighbors with him . At a point where I was broke and stressed , his yard was my escape valve from deadline and bills .
give thanks you , Ralph .
