A while back, Cindy over at Maternal Maddness asked if I would explain how I started my garden. And I’d be glad to oblige her.
Up until a few years ago, I thought I was in the minority, but with the changing economy and people searching for money saving ways to feed their family, there has been a definite boom in growing your own produce and buying food locally at farmer’s markets and roadside stands. Almost every Saturday morning in the summer I head over to my local farm market and pick up a few fresh veggies. It’s become tradition for me and I like to see what my neighbors from around the state are growing.
How I started my own garden is pretty simple, but why I am so inclined to do so is a bit of a tale.
Growing up in the tiny town of Pernell in southern Oklahoma, I had a very close-knit extended family. To me, my second- and third-cousins are just as close or closer as some people’s firsts. I lived next door to my great-grandparents for the first 16 years of my life, before my parents bought that house and we moved in. My great-grandfather, or “Pappy” as we all called him, owned a grocery store across the highway from our two houses and the post office. Some of my earliest memories are from that place, but I’ll save those for when they are relevant.
In the late evening, during the months of June and July, you’d often find my immediate family in Nannie and Pappy’s backyard, sitting in some aluminum rocking chairs. Those chairs always scared me because I thought they rocked too far back, but that’s neither here nor there. In the far back corner of the yard Paw Paw (my grandpa and Granny’s husband — Granny is Nannie and Pappy’s youngest daughter) would till out a place for Nannie to plant her vegetables. Okra, peas, beans, radishes, squash, and tomatoes. Oh, the tomatoes. Maybe a turnip or two. Paw Paw and my dad would get out there and set up the cages around the tomatoes and run some big black plastic pipe down into the ground by each plant. That was how they watered them. I have no idea if that’s a commonly used method (the only person I ever saw do that was Nannie), but I remember rows full of that black pipe.
It was a family event. We (me and my brother Kyle — Ryan was too young) would run all over the yard while the planning and planting was going on. Up over the big mound of earth in the yard that was the cellar, sliding down the cellar door, and trying to climb the well. We weren’t big enough yet to reach over the top, all I could do was peek over the edge, and my dad and uncle would soon cover the top of the well (yes, a well that they used to draw water from sits beside the house) to prevent any accidents. I remember Paw Paw letting me help him make the rows. With a pair of stakes and a long piece of twine connecting the two, he would stand on one end of the garden and I would stand on the other and he would tell me which direction to move. Then Nannie would come along with her stakes that had the vegetable names on them and put them in the rows accordingly.
And we would sit out there underneath the mulberry tree, the sun setting behind their duck pond. It is a big pond in its own right, but in those days it seemed like a lake to me. You could see the sky right in that pond and on those clear summer nights it was so big and bright, without a cloud. Down where there are no lights competing with the stars.
I don’t remember how many summers I had like this. No more than two or three. But the thick warmth in the air, the buzzing of the bugs, the itchiness on my legs from the Bermuda grass, and the feeling of togetherness with my family–what I thought was paradise at the time, what I now know is the closest thing we have on this earth to the real thing–is something I have carried with me all of my days. It was such a feeling that I remember lying in my bed at night and thinking about what heaven would be like. The only thing I could imagine was close would be playing outside in the evening at either Nannie and Pappy’s or Granny and Paw Paw’s and never being called in because it was getting dark.
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Oklahoma girl through-and-through. Writer, aspiring domestic goddess and totalitarian dictator. Taking on the world one carb-induced coma at a time. Founder of GodlyGals, a ministry for women established in 2002. Co-host of Picture Shows & Petticoats. 
ahh, I love my rural childhood memories. you described it well. I remember planting endless rows of potatoes, picking okra and corn, and having big family “shucking” parties where we shucked corn so it could be frozen for the use during the whole year. Times seemed simpler then, maybe just b/c I was so young. Thanks for the post!!
Hey Liz, do you have photos of your garden? I started doing some gardening this year – it makes me feel giddy when i see my bell peppers growing up:)
Sounds like the setting of a beautiful movie.
My great grandparents had those chairs…I HATED them for that very reason! Always SO scared I’d fall backwards!
Why I’m gardening has a lot to do with childhood memories as well.
This was such a beautiful memory and it was just as beautifully written. I too have memories of my grandparents’ garden. I was lucky enough to have it in my backyard and to have them next door. I recall the incomparable taste of fresh tomatoes and the hours spent snapping beans with grandma on the back porch.
Stopping by from SITs – happy SITs Day!
*sigh* I’d like to be sitting in a rocking chair in Nannie and Pappy’s backyard!