I was four when the neighborhood association in our suburban Boston community decided to take advantage of a large donated pasture by encouraging member families to transform it into Victory Gardens. Enthusiasm ran high. Visions of shelves lined with freshly canned produce beckoned.

My dad wasn’t sure he wanted a bigger garden. He had his plot of six tomato plants, a lattice supporting cucumbers, hills of corn interspersed with green and yellow beans that twined their way up square wooden poles. Standard operation for our neighborhood, except for the trellised cucumbers, bird houses around the garden, and interspersing pole beans with hills of corn.

Odd also was our agreement with the cats. They ate the fresh beans as far up the poles as they could reach. In return they kept the squirrels out of the corn. Neighbors shook their heads, but they continued losing corn to the squirrels.

Dad did take a plot. To the vast amusement of all, he decided he would grow peanuts. What folly. The men chuckled and made surreptitious bets. It occasioned almost as much discussion in our neighborhood as a Red Sox/Yankees game. When told he couldn’t possibly grow peanuts here in the north, Dad would respond, “Oh, never can tell.”

On the appointed weekend Dad and I went to the pasture to be given a garden site. Then the sod had to be sliced and removed, stacked in neat rows delineating each plot. Dad sliced and carried, stacked, raked and planted.

Dad worked nights, getting home around one in the morning, but he only slept a few hours. In the pink light of the summer dawn, Dad would take his hoe and pail and head to the Victory Gardens.

I missed a lot of those mornings. The intervals when I missed out meant that I could usually see a change. Tiny green shoots, small plants, then bushy plants, but no berries, no peanuts.

In other plots, corn tasseled. Puffy green marbles turned into red, juicy tomatoes. Green beans scurried up poles. Squashes, even a few pumpkins, spread long octopus arms with bulbous fruits, but we just had green bushes. Mr. Mathews would look over to our plot and josh, “No peanuts yet, Frank?”

August sweltered past. Our plants weren’t impressive. No silk tassels, no yellow flowers. Summer melted into an unusually warm autumn, and still nothing on our plants. Not even very small green marbles.

The Neighborhood Association set the date for a dinner to celebrate the end of the growing season. Members of the Victory Garden Committee asked Dad if he had given up yet. Another round of betting swept through the neighborhood. My mother tried to put a brave face on it, but when Dad asked if I wanted to bet one of my precious quarters, I imagine Mom’s explosion was heard clear to Belmont. The next morning, I gave him my quarter before Mom got up.

Then one morning Dad said I had to stay home. He was going to harvest, and I would have to wait to see the crop. He came home with burlap sacks full of roots and greenery, which he took to the big soapstone set tubs in the cellar. There he washed the roots clean.

What were those bumps, those funny shapes on the roots of the peanut bushes? But, how could they grow on roots? We had picked hickory nuts and walnuts from trees. Nuts don’t grow on roots. “Never can tell,” said Dad. Mom laughed and laughed and went upstairs to get pans ready with oil and salt.

We went to the harvest supper with whole peanut plants, unshelled peanuts, and a large serving bowl of greasy, salted peanuts. My four-year-old concept of where nuts properly grew was echoed by a room full of adults.

They examined the plants. Thoroughly. They sampled the peanuts. Then in corners of the room, in the parking lot, and from time to time in the front yard the following weekend, men came to Dad, shook his hand and paid their bets.

On Monday morning, Dad called me to come join him at the fence with our Scots neighbor, his gardening buddy, old Mrs. Lang. Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out dollar bills, giving a folded wad to Mrs. Lang and two, real, green, paper dollars to me.

I was stunned to speechlessness. Mrs. Lang, with her hands behind the hedge, counted out her money. Then, in a rare burst of emotion, she patted Dad on his shoulder saying, “Ah, Frank, yer Victorious Garden has grown the best crop of all. A fine cash crop!”

By Carol White, Master Gardener