Fall color and berries on a Korean Spice Viburnum (Viburnum carlesii)
I made my nearly daily trek to Starbucks at lunch today for a green iced tea and noticed a book for sale there, For One More Day by Mitch Ablom. The poster next to it said something along the lines of “if you had one more day to spend with someone you lost”.
You can go to the link above to read a synopsis of the book. The reason I am writing about it here is because I naturally turned this thought to, “if you had one more chance to ask a gardening question of someone you lost, what would that question be?”
I’ve written before about my Dad who gardened, and I’d say I have a few questions for him, like where did he get those asters that he gave to my grandmother? I also think about how big his tomato plants were each year and I use my memory of those as a measure of my own success with tomatoes. Since I still haven’t gotten my tomato plants to grow that big, I’m sure there is at least one ‘secret’ he didn’t share about growing tomatoes. I need to find out what that secret was!
Both of my grandmothers were gardeners; one in the city who grew mostly flowers and the other in the country on a farm where they had a large vegetable garden.
I wonder if my “country grandma” was the primary gardener out there in the vegetable garden or was it my grandfather? She would have some some tips to share about growing vegetables, I’m certain of that.
And I’d guess that my ‘city grandma’, who never had much money, might also have a question or two for me about all my gardening tools, so we would not have a one way conversation.
Did you miss the opportunity to ask someone about their gardening secrets and wish you could go back and ask just one more question of them? And who are you sharing your gardening secrets with? What is your gardening secret?
So Aunt Carol, be sure and write down all of your gardening secrets so one day, your nieces and nephews can make copies of it and have gardens as pretty as yours.
BTW, my kids really enjoyed the gardening walk they took with you a few weeks ago – a memory I’m sure they will treasure always.
Cool post,Carol.I like the story of the pink asters.My garden secrets are being written in the blog.I will think about the who would i ask a question, and what question to ask.Very thoughtful stuff…
My family has a few plants via my grandmother that have mysterious origins – one uncle said the peonies came along on the boat from Germany, and I’d like to know the truth of that story! My grandmother’s garden was the source of other hand-me-down plants, but who gave them to her? Did they come from her immigrant mother in Michigan? I guess I’d have to call on my great-grandmother in order to get answers to these questions.
Of course as long as I had her attention, there’d be a few dozen genealogy questions, too!
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Carol, I doubt very much that your country grandpa worked in the veg. garden. He would considered that to be a woman’s domain. One of the boys probably plowed it up for her. The first time they showed me the garden they told me to watch out for the black widow spiders. That was the last time I went into the garden. They also had a farm pond & I enjoyed swimming so I went for a swim in the pond. Then I saw I was swimming with a snake. So that’s the last time I went swimming in the pond. Because, you see, I”m a city girl. Not that we did’nt have snakes and spiders in the city, they just were’t close up & personal. Now my grandchildren love to show me the bugs & spiders they have found. They also had a pet snake for awhile, until it ran away from home. While itlived here I had to look t it as a pet, not as a snake.
I have been busy being a grandma and away from the computer for a few days. Your country grandmother did not have to do the gardening, that was mainly done by her father-in-law, your great grandfather who lived with the family. He was the handyman–he loved flowers, gardening, woodworking, stone cutting, keeping everyone supplied in fruit and nuts from all the nut trees in the woods. We kids usually helped him with the planting. There was also a “truck patch” below the barn where large amounts of corn and potatoes were planted. This was in addition to the smaller gardens (3) up nearer the house. So I am sure it was a group effort to keep it all going. Your grandmother was in charge of cooking and canning all the vegetables and fruits. I will say we all loved her cooking and those tastes and memories are with me today.