As I worked in our yard this past weekend, cleaning winter’s dust off furniture to get ready for what, I hope, will turn into summer, I began writing my weekly editorial in my head. It was a humor piece about gardening, because anyone who knows me, knows I capture photos of flowers and plants, because I can’t keep real ones alive. But as I wove together that gardening piece – which I may share at another time — my thoughts turned to my grandparents.

They lived in Auburn, NY, where I grew up, and I loved visiting them. Besides my grandmother’s generous and enveloping hugs, homemade cookies and potato soup, I remember her for her sea of African violets flooding the shelf of their southern-facing kitchen window. The trumpet-shaped honeysuckle on that side of their house drew greedy little hummingbirds to sip at the nectar, sending shock waves of perfumed sweetness rippling across the lawn on the currents of their tiny wings…a scent that will forever evoke sweet memories of her in my mind.

Behind my grandparents’ yard, was maybe two acres of land which stretched on for what seemed like an eternity when I was a child. There, Grandpa cultivated colossal pumpkins and squash, and bulbous beets, turnips, and tomatoes in the loamy soil.  As a child, I thought the tassels of his cornstalks must surely tickle the clouds, they were so tall. I recall being puzzled about the horseradish. Why grow food for horses when he had none? Was it wishful thinking?

The produce they didn’t give away to family, friends and neighbors, my grandmother carefully secreted away in crystalline canning jars that would reveal their savory delights when the long days of winter were upon us.  A rainbow of colored glass – tomato red, pickle green,  jam purple, and pepper yellow — adorned the shelves in their basement.

Theirs was a simpler, and probably healthier life, in some ways. I often wish I had their love of, and skill for, growing things to nourish the body. I guess I shall content myself with capturing nature in photos, to nourish the heart and eyes.

 

Published as the editorial in the June 6, 2019 issue of Beyond the Nest’s free weekly newsletter.