Up since 5am...drinking coffee...played the only scrabble game that was finished...then played angry birds, trying to get more 3 stars...my excuse for not starting on the blog is this...can't hold the coffee cup and type but can do scrabble and shoot pigs with one hand.
Yesterday was spent writing my bio for our 51st class reunion coming up in late June...Of course I didn't pay much attention to the cut/off date, because June seemed light years away when I received the notice...May 1st was the date so I emailed it yesterday, one day late... Now it is done...good or bad...time to move on.
On Sunday Herb and I spent the morning outside enjoying the beautiful sunshine...He working on the garden fence...needed some sprucing up...me planting a few rows of seeds... I put in beets, carrots and mixed green with radishes thrown in for spacing...My mom kept popping into my mind as I worked away on my own style of gardening...I'm sure she was turning over in her grave as I made wide, crooked rows in the untilled soil...this is called lasagna gardening...very different from her gardening days.
When I was growing up Mom's garden was her own territory... her escape...Daddy would plow the garden space...then she would take over...not sure how she managed because roto-tillers hadn't been invented...Kids were allowed in the garden only if they stayed on the paths, maybe they could sample a fresh pea or a raspberry...then she shooed us away while she went back to work.
Many years later she could hardly wait for the soil to dry out enough so she could use the roto-tiller...oh how she loved that machine...I can see her now, wearing a long sleeved man's shirt with a baseball cap on her head...always guarding her skin from the hot sun...first she would go up and down, then across, and last diagonal of the garden plot...following in the track of the tiller as she went...holding the machine steady, her strong body shaking as she hung on...moving back and forth, up and down, sometimes in reverse...Then resting in the shade she would admire the freshly plowed soil...mentally planning where every seed would go.
In the cool of a morning..."row marker" in hand, she measured off long even rows and using a pointed hoe, handed down from her mother, she made the furrows before planting her seeds...potatoes, beans, peas, carrots, beets, greens and corn...each row was marked, with a stick she had sharpened with a hatchet before pushing it into the ground...again she sat to admire her work...For the next two weeks she faithfully water and weeded if necessary, as she waited for her garden to grow.
She used her "wheel hoe", handed down from her parents, for weeding between rows, always keeping the soil loose so the water would penetrate...All summer she weeded and harvested, eating fresh vegetables, sharing with family and friends, canning and pickling, always putting away for the coming winter...Each year the tiller was harder for her to start and more difficult to keep under control...soon my brother started tilling her garden while she watched...not happy about it but accepted what had to be.
While shopping one day in early spring, she spotted a small roto-tiller and from the gleam in her eye I knew that we would be taking it home...It wasn't meant to till the entire garden but could be used for weeding and cultivating between the rows...Now she could get her roto-tilling fix as she jiggled and shook her way up and down each row in her relentless war against the weeds...She celebrated her 89th birthday that year...OWAV:)
Thank you mom. Love the memories
ReplyDelete