so Cathy what do you do in the way of lawn and garden work
well we have Bermuda grass here do you have that there
um i don't know exactly what that is
it's a kind of grass that dies in the winter time
um i don't
do you live in an apartment or a house
yeah i live in an apartment
so you probably don't do any lawn care
yeah that's that's actually correct
oh okay well we used to have a service come in
and fertilize and such but we ran in some into some money trouble so we do all of that ourselves now does the grass die there in Iowa in the winter time
is everything brown
um it turns brown yeah
yeah
guess it freezes and everything so
yeah
so right now we do nothing because it's brown and it doesn't grow until
later on in the spring
so does that mean you have to replant each year or
but
no huh-uh it just goes dormant and then it starts it's you know it rejuvenates itself in the springtime there are people that uh
that reseed in the winter time and grow something called winter grass or something like that i can't remember exactly what it's called
and so it's green in the winter but you have to seed over all of this other stuff that's
there and it's kind of hard to grow it's kind of foolish as far as i'm concerned
i see
so did you grow up in Iowa
no i'm actually from uh
uh the Seattle area we lived outside outside of the city in the country and uh we have five acres of land up against a hillside where i grew up and so we did have a garden about a one a half acre garden big size
oh
yeah
and grew standard things like corn beans and we had some trees apple trees fruit trees you know and apple trees and
did your mom do any canning and that kind of stuff
oh yeah
huh
did lots of canning and
we even
made an annual trip out to eastern Washington
Yakima area to get uh
peaches and things like that to can in addition to the the fruit we got out of our own garden
huh
huh
we have a garden here but in Texas it's really hard to grow a garden because it's so
hot and the sun is so intense that you know the
uh-huh
the tomatoes come on and they kind of fry right on the plant so it's real hard and the bugs you know if that doesn't kill it the bugs do so i have tried kind you know with just very little success
to have a garden here
did you enjoy it did you like to do it when you were there
oh yeah i enjoyed um
working in the garden
um
my dad was a big um
fan of organic gardening
huh
and so when we um did our garbage and stuff we separated all the banana peels and egg shells and stuff that
yeah you had a compost pile huh
yeah
yeah and
always picked a different place in the garden to dump it out
had our own rototiller and
rough even though it was a large plot we used a rototiller for the whole thing and so that was it was quite a bit of work for all of us but we five kids and
how many how many were in your family
uh
six kids altogether
was it something that the kids mostly took care of
actually dad did more than his share but uh we always had our our assignments to help out
yeah
yeah
so and mom did very little of the gardening although she did most of the canning and other things
yeah
what was your favorite thing
to eat
um oh to eat oh um
the our big crops were were
green beans and corn and i guess i liked the corn
uh-huh
yeah
and so now that i'm in Iowa i should be get be able to get lots of uh
you'd think so
corn on the cob huh
so what took you to Iowa
uh
i just graduated
i
i'm working at the University of Iowa
uh-huh
um on a post doctoral fellowship i just graduated
out west with a PhD in physics
where did you graduate
uh Brigham Young University
i knew it i'm a member too that's why i was when you were talking about your garden and everything and your mom canning i thought this guy's got to be got to have roots there somewhere
uh
uh
yes and uh
so are you originally from Texas
no i grew up in California
i see
did did your family have a farm or were you more in the city
no it was more in the city but we did have a um a little garden out in the back because anything grows there you just stick it in the ground and it it grows
uh-huh
oh yeah
yeah my wife is from southern California and their family has a an orange tree and a lemon tree out back
yeah
and they grow a few things they tried tomatoes and stuff but not they don't have very you know just a small small backyard so there's not too much else they could do there
yeah do you have in in your apartment
