Chapter 30

Let’s face it. Mother’s green thumb extended all the way up to her elbow. She could make anything grow. The Place had two large gardens. The kitchen garden was just behind the back yard and in front of the stable. The big garden was just past the side yard, beyond the driveway but before the orchard.

The kitchen garden was flanked on one end by fat peony bushes that bloomed copiously with bright pink blossoms each summer.  I still remember their sweet fragrance. In the kitchen garden, you’d find neat rows of carrots, peas, radishes, green beans (pole beans that grew up stakes), yellow summer squash, an asparagus patch, and a forest of tomato plants. Daddy LOVED tomatoes! In front of it was a small pond she dug by hand and lined with concrete, where birds and other wildlife often came for water. Of course, she surrounded it with more flowers.

The big garden had the large plants, like numerous rows of sweet corn, staked raspberry bushes, a strawberry patch, and spreading plants like cucumbers and winter squash. No pumpkins. She said they were more trouble to prepare than they were worth.

The orchard had apple and plum trees, which made great pies and jelly. During apple season, she made a green apple pie almost every night for dinner. We weren’t spoiled or anything!

One summer, Daddy decided we were taking a vacation. A real one — not to visit relatives in Missouri as usual, but back East. To visit other relatives. (He didn’t like to pay for a motel.)

He didn’t give Mother much notice, so she was frantically trying to harvest, freeze, or can all those vegetables so they wouldn’t go to waste while we were gone. We girls were out there, picking stuff like crazy, when a strange car pulled into the driveway.  Mother trundled the full wheelbarrow, laden with vegetables, over to him to see what he wanted.  The guy got out and looked around.

He was looking for a bait shop and saw Cindy’s and my sign for “Worms: 25 cents.” It was one of our many entrepreneurial efforts (but that’s another story).

He complimented Mother on the beautiful yard and flowers and gardens. They got to chatting, and he said he and his family were here for a week, renting a cabin on the lake. Mother said, “Do you like sweet corn? I just picked a bunch, and I need to get rid of some of it.”

“Sure,” the guy said, “My wife and five kids would love that!” So she dumped several dozen ears into a gunnysack and put them in his trunk.

“How about tomatoes?” she asked, quickly realizing she’d have less to can.

“That would be great!” the guy said. And so it went, until he had a trunk full of fresh produce. He could hardly close the lid.

“Can’t I pay you for all this?” he asked.

Mother waved away his offer.

“This is so generous,” he said.” “So … what does your husband do?”

Daddy wasn’t home at the time, so the big purple truck with “Hillman & Pigg Plumbing & Heating” was not visible.

Now, Mother had a penchant for scrambling words. She did it so often, we just laughed and it became part of her catalog of verbal mistakes.

“Oh, she replied, “he’s in humming and pleating.”

The man looked at her strangely, got in his car, thanked her again, and drove away rather quickly. Mother stood there a minute, then slapped herself on the forehead. “Did I just say humming and pleating?”

We girls nearly fell on the ground laughing. “He must have thought you were nuts!”

That night, she told Daddy the story and what she had said. His response: “You mean to tell me that he offered to pay you and you didn’t take it?” 

Epilogue (Cindy): Our family never had much money, but the bountiful gardens Mother tended always had our plates full to overflowing. Summer night dinners were regular feasts with platters of sweet corn, bowls of sliced tomatoes and freshly cooked green beans, new potatoes, and sweet peas shamed the piece of meat on the table. We hardly noticed the meat, truth be told.

One of my favorite things to do in the summer was to go out to the strawberry patch, dig my bare feet into the warm soil, and chow down on one strawberry after another.

Here’s the thing to remember about Mother’s gardens. They were so productive because there wasn’t a weed in sight. Ever. The only weeds in Mother’s garden? Three young girls and one boy, and those four kids she fed well.