Lessons from the Earth

 

Garden Remembrance

“Don’t talk to me about town gardens,’ said Elinor Rapsley; “which means, of course, that I want you to listen to me for an hour or so while I talk about nothing else.”

Saki (“The Occasional Garden,” Garden Tales, p.97, Viking Penguin, 1990)

When I was a child, my grandparents, Mama and Popa Richardson, lived in a small house in Jefferson City, TN. Their yard butted up against one of the dorms of Carson Newman University. The white frame house was two bedrooms, one bath, with kitchen, dining room and living room. I remember several things about our visits there, which were always in summer. There was an enormous mimosa tree with powder-puff pink blooms in the back yard, a quilt box in the basement that held all the winter blankets and quilts and always smelled of cedar, a massive vegetable garden, and beside the outside faucet, a patch of curly mint. Every time you stepped on it, or dragged the garden hose over it, the scent of mint filled the air and mixed with the summer smells of new-cut grass and mimosa blossoms. For me, those are the best memories of all.

Mama grew up farming in Alabama, eldest of 9. From early adolescence, she cooked three meals a day for family and farm hands. She sewed quilts and almost all our school clothes, grew that enormous garden, cooked, canned, or froze everything it produced, and worked at Belk Department Store. I don’t think anyone in my family had ever heard of leisure.

Those two-week summer visits with my grandparents, when Mama and Mother “put up” the garden, made all our school clothes, and sewed quilts by hand, were when my soul learned its purpose. To be sure, neither Mother nor Mama taught me anything directly, but by osmosis and observation, they gave me a lifetime of lessons. Now, the smell of mint, cut grass, and mimosa generates wonderful memories and I feel closer to those women than I ever did when they were alive.

All town gardens may not be the size of my grandparents, but they can still hold a deep knowing and appreciation for the earth. If you have children, or grandchildren, let them get their hands dirty, let them “pull corn” and shell beans, and understand that the earth feeds them and every other living being. And, please, share with them the scents of mint and new-cut grass and tickle their noses with mimosa blossoms.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane