I come to the garden alone...

In search of my mother's garden, I found my own. -Alice Walker, American writer

This quote I found on a fellow blogger’s site, “A Country Farmhouse”. The quote was

beneath a tender photo of three generations. If you know the site, then you know how

lovely the photos are, taken by the author. I hope she won’t mind that I am using this

quote.

In a literal sense, my mother’s garden was exactly that: a garden. It was an acre of

courtesy of Bing.com--like Mom's garden

strawberries, tomatoes, green beans, potatoes, lettuce, radishes, onions, and…well, you get the idea. We did constant battle with weeds. In fact, it was daily battle. I would start hoeing the potatoes, and by the time I finished the many, oh so many rows, it was time

to start again at the beginning. Picking the vegetables were the same process: pick the ripe tomatoes one day, and go back the next day to find a whole new crop. Green beans, again the same.

I can’t say it was a lovely garden, but it was well-laid out, nurtured, and used. The food harvested was canned or frozen, or stored in a cool dark place for use through the winter.  The summer that used to stretch long and lazy when I was young changed. It was now a

from Bing.com: perfection

summer of gardening, canning, making jam, and mowing the lawn. Repeatedly.  It does sound like I am complaining, but I am not. During those days where my mother and I hunched over, searching under the strawberry runners for ripe berries, we talked.

She told me stories about her life, I asked questions. It was probably the only time that my brothers and father were far away from us, so we could talk about anything we wanted.

It was also a time when both my grandmothers would get together in our big farmhouse kitchen, and we would all work at the steaming hot process of canning. I usually got the job of running the cooked tomatoes through the ricer with a wooden pestle.  The boiling

from Bing.com  "It was a fierce summer day

juice splattered my arms with red dots. At first, I complained, but Mom replied, “You’re fine. Keep going.” That was my mother’s response for many complaints for my entire growing up years. Thick hot tomato sauce was poured into the rows of scalded quart Mason jars, and placed in a boiling water bath. At the end of the day, while we cleaned up the kitchen, jars lined up on the table, ready for winter’s chili and vegetable soups, thick stews, and goulash.

These canning days filled the kitchen with stories from my grandmothers, about their own canning days with their mothers and grandmothers. There would be canning horror stories, canning disasters, and canning triumphs.

Lemon tree next to St. Francis

Oranges in January

My own garden is modest, to say the least. Living in a dry desert climate, we have to

water every plant, if we want it to be green instead of withered up brown. We have

fruit trees that produce lemons, oranges, limes, and grapefruits. We give them away as

fast as we can, keeping only what we two can use. The geraniums are bountiful in size,

Lavender in Winter

all colors. The lavender grows and spreads out, enticing honey bees. We have some

My roses

roses, ‘Cecil Burgess roses’ I think is their name. They fill the air with intense rose scent, almost thick enough to eat.

I will never have my mother’s garden, but I have found my own.