March 2010. Father Nature: The Baton Rouge backyard bounty of George Atherton.

George Atherton of Baton Rouge knows he should have been a truck farmer. If you met him you would see a face tanned by the sun and inscribed with the lines that are the roadmap of the life he has lived. He is sixty-seven years old. The years must manifest themselves in some manner. Still, his green eyes reveal a youthful, impish quality and his broad grin suggests satisfaction.

If you look even more closely at George’s face, you may see the furrows of a bountiful garden. The creases in his forehead are the tomatoes, his favorite vegetable. The strawberries are planted in the smile lines around his mouth. The gray flecks in his eyebrows are sprinkled with peppers, squash and melons and the crow’s feet around his eyes are populated with nectarines, peaches, apples and pears. With his easy manner and self-deprecating humor, he would have been a powerful force at the fresh market in days gone by.

A transaction between Farmer George and a city resident may have sounded like this: “How much are my tomatoes? Three for a dollar, but I tell you what. I’ll let you have seven for two-fifty to go along with this bushel of okra. Can’t have tomatoes without just-cut okra, can you? I can’t. And why don’t you call your wife and have her start boiling the water for this fresh, sweet corn on the cob?”

For reasons unknown, George once thought he wanted to be a doctor—but the bonds of matrimony made him rethink that life plan. Most of his life story can be told in fifty-nine words.

“I got married and five days later went into med school,” he said. “But that was just too much to do at once. I dropped out of med school. I taught chemistry and physics in high school for two years. Then my wife and little daughter told me how they wanted clothes and stuff so I came to work for Exxon.” A career at Exxon is a perfectly acceptable and normal endeavor for a husband and father to undertake. It’s not as noble as being a farmer, but it’s respectable.

George’s wife, Susan, a charming and beautiful woman at any age, says that there is a common element that has grounded George throughout his life. “Everywhere we went, George always had a garden,” she said. If you knew George’s background, you would think that gardening is in his blood; after all, his father was a professor of agricultural education at the University of Arkansas and later, LSU. Perhaps, but Susan says even without that background, George would always have had his garden. The rite of spring has always beckoned George to plant a garden, even when he was attending medical school.

“When I was in med school I put some plants out in pots on the ledge of the seventh floor apartment where Susan and I were living,” George said. “I put some stuff up there and did fine, but after about a year somebody said something about it and made me stop.” After that, the Atherton living quarters always had yards for gardens and George has planted gardens in Little Rock and three different homes in Baton Rouge.

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