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| L to R onions, bean plants, cucumber plants, pepper plants, tomato vines |
If gardening is intergenerational, then this practice will last forever in my family. The summer sun shines early in the northern United States. If it weren’t for Daylight Savings Time, I would be awake every morning at 4:00 when the morning dawns. Nevertheless, the sun still forces me out of bed with time to spend working in the garden weeding, watering, or harvesting vegetables. As soon as my husband and I bought our first home, we dug up a patch of ground on the West end of the tiny backyard and began growing vegetables in the summertime. We made plenty of mistakes that year such as adding too much chicken poop that killed off the bean sprouts, but the tomatoes sure loved it! Our second Summer we planted the tomatoes too late, but thankfully my green-thumb, gardening-expert mother told us to just pick all the green tomatoes, stick them in a cardboard box, and then can them when they turn red. Success! Mom wasn’t the only green thumb in the family. The gardening generations go way back beyond my limited memory. My grandfather owned a humble home in Montana and dug his small garden patch next to the alley in the backyard producing beautiful, delicious vegetables every Summer.
For several years I have been planting seeds indoors to prepare for the garden and to save money, of course. Frugality is part of the appeal of gardening. Even when I have suffered back pain and other sorts of pains, I can’t give up this compulsive habit. As I have often quoted, “All we have to do is plant the garden, but God makes it grow.” Then the desire for a better harvest forces me out there to weed and hoe and water. There is always more that could be done, but I don’t want to give away my back to the garden either. I wonder if frugality is why grandpa had a garden, too. Surely there are more rewards than just saving money.
This Summer I planted 90 tomato plants! As my mom has been known to say, It’s a little nutso. How crazy am I? If you buy two little packs of tomato seeds and plant them yourself in the wee seed cups, you will have at least 90 plants in the end. Even after planting 90 seedlings, I still had half-full seed packets. I tried to give the seeds away, but they already had their own seeds. Oh well, I can use them next year. As much as the seed companies and gardening experts tell you not to use seeds from previous years, I have not had a problem producing seedlings two, three, or even four years later. The results are less predictable, but why throw away perfectly good seeds just because they are more than 12 months old? Is 12 months the magic impotence number? I think not. Mom used to save seeds from plants, and I have begun doing that with certain flowers and always with the green beans.
We have more than just tomato vines in the garden this year. My husband is interested in chili peppers. We struggle to produce very many pepper fruits in Minnesota where we now live. Summers are not long enough or hot enough, it seems. We did better one year when we planted Hungarian wax peppers. They kept producing abundantly even when we would pick the fruits off the plants. But, we keep trying. This year we planted a variety of pepper seeds. With all the hot weather we have had so far this June, I think it might be a success. I remember my grandpa bringing in melons, zucchini, and beans from the garden. He was the poster child for the green thumb. Even with such a small garden and house, he made it so abundantly fruitful. Grandpa was not only fruitful in his garden, but in his quiet power. If silence can be powerful, Grandpa wielded it more than any weapon.
My mother is an extravert like her mother. Her dad was so quiet that we rarely heard him speak except for the few words he would say throughout the day. My cousins got to know grandma and grandpa a lot better than my sisters and me because they lived in the same town. We lived two states away, but would visit every Summer. Grandpa was not only an expert gardener, but an accomplished fisherman. Grandpa fished in the lakes and reservoirs of Montana rather than the rivers that fly-fishermen frequent. We got to go camping and fishing in the mountains with them. We got to go to the Lutheran church with them. Grandpa had some unique gifts. He taught himself music. He played accordion, electric guitar, and organ. I can hear him singing in my memories, “Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way.” Grandpa made fried chicken like no one on earth, and he enjoyed riding his mo-ped to the IGA store to get a few things for the day. Grandma and Grandpa loved playing Rummikub and card games. They often had my mom’s aunts and uncles over for games. This is when I heard the expletives come out of his mouth after a card move that hurt him. It was rare, but sort of funny. We usually felt a little guilty, though, when we heard him talk that way because we were always taught not to swear. Grandma talked a lot and would smoke her cigarette. She laughed so much during those days. It was so refreshing. That was Summer with my grandparents: fresh produce from the garden, games, camping, and laughing.
Gardening bridged the generations even with less than ideal land for it. Mom kept the vegetables coming! We lived on a tiny city lot but, thankfully, it was located on a corner lot so the southern sun reached the backyard quite easily. Mom dug up the sod on half our wee backyard in Minneapolis and turned it into a garden complete with a compost pile and wooden borders that my dad helped her build. We were told to help pull weeds. I do remember the quack grass as my grandpa and mom called it. Today when I was weeding around my onions and beans, I pulled out quack grass. Then I was flooded with memories of grandpa and mom and all of their fruitful gardens. One of my favorite vegetables mom grew was called kohlrabi. We would peel it and eat it raw. I have never once grown a kohlrabi because my husband hates them. When we were little mom used to spend the evenings canning fruits like pears, peaches, and plums, and she canned or froze the vegetables. She told me that she would feel so tired at the end of the day, but she would keep going, canning the produce after we were put to bed. I think she found it enjoyable to be honest.
Gardening comes with other rewards. The fresh, flavorful taste really does not compare to vegetables that have been grown with chemicals or hydroponically or en masse and shipped over a thousand miles away from their source. Every year I have a few plants that reseed themselves or never die if Winter has been a mild one. We have an abundance of dill weed and in smaller quantities of cilantro, spinach, lettuce, onions, parsley, or tomatoes that often reseed themselves or grow again from the previous year. This year the parsley came back because it never died. I have been feeding it a lot to my daughter’s rabbit, Jerold. The little bun-bun surely loves this treat, and it saves us a bit on the cost of hay. When I am outside picking this awesome stuff, I feel the sun, I hear the pleasant sounds of the birds singing or the squirrels running up the bark of the trees, and the breeze helps me breathe. I have never enjoyed sunbathing. It feels like a waste of time, and I cannot get myself to relax enough to actually enjoy being hot and sweaty while sitting with the bright sun scorching my fair blue eyes even with the thin eyelids closed. The reward of keeping one’s hands busy gardening while enjoying the season produces an effectual reward. I wonder if Grandpa enjoyed these rewards of gardening, too.
These memories keep me connected to the family from before. Death took Grandma and Grandpa away. Grandma was only 64 when death took her, and Grandpa died suddenly and tragically a few years later. These losses occurred at a tender age during my childhood. I still feel their loss very deeply. Perhaps my compulsion of keeping a vegetable garden is partly fueled by the memories of the intergenerational garden. These good and pleasant memories of the gift of the fruits of the garden are a reward. The colors, tastes, and images of the loving people who were in my life fill these memories. I expect the biblical proverb will come to pass with my children and their children, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
