Saturday, March 30, 2013

Gardening With Grandma

Ever since I was a little girl, gardens have been a constant in my life. I remember my mom's giant raised beds from the perspective of a little girl up in Grass Valley. In my memory her garden stretched on forever and the green of the plants towered over me. In Indiana she had rows of corn growing in the ground, and we lived in hate of the beetles that liked to devour those delicious kernels as much as we did. She had raised beds filled with potatoes that were like little hidden treasures. When it was time to harvest them we'd pull buckets of spuds out of the ground and spread them out on the back porch. Also in her raised beds were wax beans, but well, lets just say I had one enemy in her garden. When we moved to Sacramento half the back yard was set up with raised beds, and in that space my mother grew the biggest tomato plants I have ever seen. We stuffed ourselves with BLT's all summer and enjoyed chili with canned tomatoes in the winter.

Now we have a new generation to pass the gardening bug onto, and this last week my mom did her best to do just that. While I was working on a new flower bed my mom and Claire planted potatoes together. I kept getting distracted from my project by the cuteness of the two of them playing in the dirt. It seemed only right that Claire got her first gardening lesson from the same person who gave me mine. 








 You will note the amount of mud around Claire's pacifier in the video. That happened in the picture right above it. I was going to take a photo of Claire inspecting a handful of dirt and just as I was snapping the photo she shoved the handful of dirt into her mouth. I just tell myself that she is learning how to test soil quality. Also note her pants from the knees down. That's not a shadow, that's mud. Le sigh. 


3 comments:

Grandma Kay said...

We had a TON of FUN, didn't we, Claire!!! Nothing better than a day outside and a mouthful of dirt to make you really, really hungry for a good supper.

AuntieSa said...

And I remember all those gardens PLUS the GINORMOUS garden we had in Omaha...the whole thing was a raised bed (like 3 railroad ties high) and took up about a quarter of the entire lot! I distinctly remember nibbling chives out of it all the time and thinking I was really getting away with something! Fresh rhubarb stalks (rinsed and dipped in sugar!), shelling peas and eating them right out of the pod before you even got them inside, eating tomatoes like they were apples right there in the garden. And the big pussy willow (started from a stick I drug home from some adventure or other) that guarded the corner and kept watch over everything! I myself planted three hamsters out there...I know, ewwww!

Yup--Mom definitely instilled us all with the garden bug early on!

Robin said...

I totally ate fresh chives all the time when I was a kid too! I don't know what made them so tempting to me as a kid as it's not something I still do as an adult. I do still love to eat peas right in the garden though. Something that tasty doesn't need to be cooked.