The Soul of a Garden

"... the fields of the farm were the body, the house the head and the gardens the soul, and she would go out each morning after chores and breakfast, before dishes and day work, and walk through the rows with a cup of steaming coffee held with both hands and talk to the garden -- not wasted talk, not silly talk, but talk as she would speak to another person." --- Gary Paulsen, from  CLABBERED DIRT, SWEET GRASS


I believe I would have made a good farm woman. I love to grow things. I don't mind the work, don't even consider it work. I love to cook, especially love to cook things I've grown in my garden. I like a clean house, and enjoy tending to my two silly animals. I like a routine. I think I would have made a good farm woman, but I think I would have probably balked at the lack of money that went with it, even though I do know how to pinch a penny, I'm not especially fond of it. So for this "city girl," it's fun to make a garden. It's a hobby, but my table doesn't depend on it.

My paternal grandmother was said to have been a good farm woman. In fact, family legend is that she was the true farmer and my grandfather just went along with it for lack of a better idea. He was a blacksmith at a time in history when blacksmithing was a dying art. He fell for my granny and because she came from farming stock, he farmed along with her. There are stories of her tending the animals, driving the harvest wagon, killing the chickens, milking the cow, saving the seed from year to year. On the other hand, my grandfather would take to his bed whenever there was a crop failure, and stay there until he was coaxed back out into the fields by my granny.

I didn't know this set of grandparents. Grandpa died before my parents were even married. Granny died when I was 18 months old, but I have letters she wrote, and know enough from these letters to realize that she was from another time if not another place. Born in the late 1880s, she was tough and hardworking, but also gregarious and funny. Her letters are pure joy to read, even now, and I can imagine that they were looked forward to by their recipients.

She loved her family, her home, the land, the crops, the animals, and her garden. She speaks often in these letters of things that were growing in her kitchen garden. She made plans for what she would use the various food crops for, soups and stews, salad and baked goods. She never seemed to consider that the things she planted might not grow, and she never spoke of anything that didn't make well. Mother used to say Granny could poke a stick in the ground and it would make a tree. She had planted all the shrubbery that grew around the house where we lived until I was 13 years old. I didn't know the names of the shrubs then the way I do now, but I was told that Granny brought them from her house, grown in tin cans from cuttings she had taken. She planted them, still in the tins with the bottoms cut out, between the windows and beside the doors.

There were a couple of watermelon pink crepe myrtle, and at least one rose of sharon, a pyracantha bush by the front door that bloomed sweet in summer but attracted so many bees we had to use the back door until the blooming quit. And there was a huge bougainvillea in the side yard, with dark pink blossoms all spring, summer and fall. The side yard was off limits to us barefoot kids because of that bougainvillea and the long thorns it dropped in the grass. I don't know if Granny was also responsible for the mimosa tree in the back yard, or the huge china berries we climbed when Mama and Daddy weren't looking, but those too are old-fashioned trees that nobody messes with much these days. Most of these bushes and trees are still growing there. I saw them a few months back when I took my grandson by the old place to look at the footprints I left in the concrete driveway back in the 1950s when it was fresh-poured, tiny footprints -- I think I was five years old.

My garden is growing. Some things are doing better than others. The white squash seed from last year have been a failure, but the new seed Daddy bought at Tractor Supply are flourishing. The cucumbers are in full bloom and I'm watching for the first fruit. The beefy tomato plants are ahead of the others, and I will stake them this morning. I watered late yesterday to soften the ground for the stakes. As an experiment, I planted six tomatoes in containers, just to see if this controlled environment will yield more than the ones in the garden. The plants in the containers look better; they're twice the size of the ones planted in the ground, but we shall see if they produce better. They may be all flash and no substance. Peppers are still in the greenhouse. Until these cool mornings quit, they won't be of a size to transplant. I have three kinds of peppers, and the green bell seem to be the slowest. I don't talk to my garden plants, but maybe I should try it. It certainly couldn't hurt. I think I'll start today and report back later if a garden truly does have a soul.

Onward ....