Gardens

Did you know that they did a study and found that gardening (or working in the yard) is one of the top 5 behaviors of happy people?  "They" being I don't know who.  I read it in Readers Digest sometime last summer...2011.  You might as well know that I carry some facts along with me who's source I can't quite recall.  The numbers associated with these facts are usually wrong, but you can rest assured that I did, in fact, read them somewhere or hear them somewhere else and they are true.  

Grandma Miller, Me, Mom and Dad

I first remember being in the garden with my Grandma Miller.  I loved her pea patch.  I ate the peas from the plump, but not too plump pods.  Those were the sweetest.  She would sit on a chair outside with a bowl of peas to shell for her delicious creamed new potatoes and peas.  I might have helped her, but for sure I ate.  She also taught me how to make dollies with hollyhocks.  The flowers were the skirts and the buds were the heads.  They were attached with toothpicks. When I grew up to be a mom guess what I planted?  peas and hollyhocks.  One great May my first born came to visit with his first born.  We went out to the garden.  The peas were ripe and we ate.  It was like coming home.

Watermelons from Dad's garden

My one-year old father in front of his family's cornfield

My Dad was another garden hero.  He fancied himself a farmer.  He had another job he went to, but farming was his love.  I wouldn't say he grew plants as much as he collected plants.  He had every species of peach and nectarine so there was always something in season.  Grapes were planted everywhere. He grew watermelon, musk melon, honeydew melon and cantaloupe.  On a good year we had a watermelon bust and the people from church would come for the juicy feast.  Probably my favorite "Dad crop"  was pomegranates.  I spent the fall season with stained fingers from my pomegranate consumption. When I was grown I knew my Dad loved me because of all his efforts to ship  pomegranates to me even though I lived halfway across the country.  Once he sent them in a box.  Another time he brought some with him on the airplane in a black garbage bag.  When the shipments ended a few years ago I found myself shamelessly walking into the store and paying $2.00 for one pomegranate. The fall ritual was so deep, the thought of going without threatened my identity and where I came from.

Lincoln, NE

This picture comes with a parable.  It's called the parable of the lilac tree.  We had just purchased our first house.  I walked the property to assess our assets.  There was a homely little bush planted in the corner of the lot.  I thought, "What a dumb little bush.  I wish it was a lilac."  I gave it a few whacks with my pruning shears with a guess as to what it might become in the spring.  Months later I was again walking my property and on this bush some little flower buds were revealed...lilac buds.  Sometimes we just don't know what we have.

This year's peas and tomatoes

Kohlrabi and banana peppers

I have never become the gardener that my father and grandmother were.  I have planted a lot, but didn't get to stay to see much harvest.  When I was in IL I planted a peach tree and some apple trees. After a few seasons we moved to our next home in MN. A few years later my son called to tell me he had been in Bourbonnais, IL and had stopped by our old house.  The woman invited him to the yard to see how things were doing.  He said, "Mom, your peaches are doing great.!"  This call meant so much to me.  Somewhere someone was benefiting from a choice I had made.   The law of the harvest is beautiful.  I don't know how long I'll live in Georgia, but I plant because it's right.

My mom taught me to love flowers.  I remember nasturtiums  planted in the borders when I was young.  Her home is decorated with roses.  I am actually a recovering rose catalog addict myself.  I'm realistic about my commitment level and only grow knockouts now.  I do have one unfulfilled wish.  I want to grow a Lady Banks climber.

I learned a life lesson early in my flower growing years.  I had just planted these tiny little annuals in the borders around the stepping stones.  My cute toddler son went walking and stepping on practially every young bloom.  I almost stopped him and then realized, maybe flowers have an even greater purpose than beautifying.  Perhaps one of their reasons to be is to soften the way of the tender sweet baby feet of God's children.

Azaleas welcome spring

Well, I don't have every species of grape.  I love to plant, but hate to weed.  Usually about midway through summer I look out at my parched plants and think, "Sorry my little green friends, it's too hot to water." But I keep trying and I do have two pots of wave petunia to welcome anyone coming home...and I think I'll order a pomegranate tree.