When I was young, we lived in Texas next door to my
Mammaw. She had a pasture behind her
house with cows and a chicken coop in her back yard. On the other side of us was our neighbors big
"truck garden". They raised vegetables
to sell. My sister and I played with the
little boy who lived there and we would cut through the rows of tall corn going
back and forth between our houses. It was a wonderful, comforting childhood.
When my father's job transferred us to the desert of
Utah, where he worked at a lab that made rocket fuel for NASA, I thought we’d
left all that behind. But, I was wrong.
In Utah’s tightly cloistered community of ranchers, there was no housing
available for the influx of "outsiders" that invaded their turf, so
we had to live in a trailer court for awhile - where my Mother planted rows and
rows of tall zinnias in our dirt "yard". It's still my favorite flower!
Later, when we got our own place, my Mother would escape
into her vegetable garden as soon as she got off work and supper was done. We didn't bother her when she was out there
plucking weeds and hoeing. When it became too dark to see, she would come in
bringing a couple of tomatoes or some squash.
On Saturdays, we rode our bikes along the dirt road to
the cemetery armed with a paper grocery bag to fill with wild asparagus that
grew along the sides of the irrigation ditches. When we came home, my Mother
would steam it and serve it with a squeeze from a lemon.
In those days everyone could connect their food to the
land. Our eggs were delivered in big
cardboard canisters by Mr. Bott and our milk came from a local Dairy. Fresh
vegetables could be bought from Leona Yagi. We canned peaches from Nielson’s
Fruit Stand. Old Mrs. Bisek paid the neighborhood kids 25 cents a pail for
dandelions that she turned into wine – which she would later give as gifts to
our parents at Christmas. Summer in a
jar!
Everyone rented a meat locker in town. It worked like
this: Families would purchase a cow or pig
(sometimes sheep) from a farmer and it would be butchered for you.
They’d cut it up any way you wanted- chops, roasts or ground up. Then you stored the meat in your locker along
with any deer or ducks you’d shot during season, or any fish you’d caught. Once
a week Dad would go to the meat locker and pick up whatever Mother had written
out on a list for cooking. We all knew where our food came from.
Our Mother worked and so we ate store-bought bread, but the majority of our Mormon neighbor ladies baked their own. In the summer, we used to hang around Bartley Hansen’s house on baking day so we could watch his mother slide pans of fresh bread out of the oven. The smell was heavenly! She would cut up a hot loaf, smear it with butter and use it to chase the kids outside. I envied him at school as he bit into his homemade sandwiches while I “suffered” through a purchased “hot lunch”.
Decades later, when my husband and I bought our place
here in Virginia, we planted a garden every year. It was so much fun to watch the plants come
up and see our daughter toddling about with her little bare feet and straw hat
“helping” us. It was another Eden.
Once, while I was busy fixing supper, I sent my 4 year
old outside with a basket and instructions to pick 2 cucumbers and some cherry
tomatoes. When some time had passed and
she hadn’t returned, I went out to the garden to see what had happened. I found her leaning against the garden bench
chewing a tremendous mouthful of cherry tomatoes. In her basket was one lone cucumber with
several bites taken out of it corncob-style.
Somewhere along the way she had forgotten her purpose was to gather and
simply began to eat.
I could never get enough peas together to make a pot
because she at them raw. Same way with
the strawberries! But, who could blame her? One year we planted a wheelbarrow
full of pumpkins, another year a row of cotton, and the next a patch of peanuts
just to see it. We grew old favorites like tomatoes and squash and discovered
new ones like kale and peppers. I
planted Zinnias for color and Sweet Basil for smell. We fostered huge stripped caterpillars on the
parsley and provided soft ground for turtles to lay eggs. Birds loved our Sunflowers.
I’m hoping that all these beautiful memories of gardens and people and community (though my own memories and not yours) will entice you into wanting to be a part of something similar with Central Library’s Bookworm Garden project.
You
may recall our big planting day at Central last October with volunteers from
the Master Gardeners as well as other individuals?
We
got the shrubs in, planted some vegetables and herbs on the back patio and were
able to have some gardening programs for the children. Since then we’ve had some mulch and woodchips
delivered, and we have a group of Boy Scouts coming in to work on some building
projects with us. We also have some Book
Garden signposts being made by a volunteer.
What
we need is for interested groups to come in and “adopt” a portion of the garden
to claim as their own – planting and maintaining vegetables, herbs and flowers.
From this we hope to develop relationships that will allow us to sponsor some
garden-related programs and activities for patrons.
Thanks!
