roses and tomato paste

N taught me how to prune rose bushes in his musty and dust laden garden. it never rained there.

I'm really sad-he's been dead now many years- he never realized I was what he wanted.
He said it was a pity nobody would carry on his passions, especially with La P, but there was me, whom he never really saw , because-I guess- I was a girl, and the daughter of the black sheep. When I got married, he donated ALL the roses he had , but in La P, for an enormous pot at the reception.

Funny. I remember him carving up lobsters that actually moved !!! after being cut up, in Washington. Then in Ottawa he made frog's legs (ug) and a dynamite pea thing. In Lima he made pickled small oranges, and probably taught Z how to cook things. And people learned well. The food was GOOD.
I was the one who picked up on gardening, cooking, photography and painting. But I was never offered a hand into his world while he was still alive.

In La P he had a vegetable garden and he planted tomatoes which, wow, produced tomatoes, tomatoes, and even more tomatoes!!! Big lesson there. What to do with surplus? Z began giving some away and trading them with the grocer for other produce, but there were only two in their family, so that still left alot over.
Then Z began making really good tomato paste. I've never managed to get it quite right, though, and now I can't ask her about it.