Gardening Legacy

[vfem]

Yesterday I shared one of my garden pictures where we completed putting in the rows. I also shared the pictures on my facebook page which grabbed the attention of my cousin (who must have been very emotional for reason). She brought up how I remind her of my grandmother, and she would LOVE to come down and help me with the garden (she lives in northern NY state). We started talking about grandma, and how lucky we were to be raised with her. She also mentioned that her dad gave her a jar of my strawberry jam for Christmas, since I sent them a basket full of jars and biscotti over the holiday. She went on about how it tasted like Grandma's and how it brought on all these memories from when we were kids in CT.

It was a very nice family moment (even on facebook) and just wanted to share because I felt SO good to have such a wonderful conversation about my family... and it all started with piles of dirt!

 

[so lucky]

That is very reassuring; you just never realize whom you impact with your actions. Great that it was such a positive reaction! You go, girl!

 

[897tgigvib]

So many people have as an earliest memory being in the garden with mom or dad, or grandma or grampa. It really is a legacy! For me, it was with my mother tending and planting strawberries in what was probably too much shade. And with my mother's oldest sister, Eleanor, who knew so much of the very old school about plants.

Not everyone is so blessed though. Those who start with little or no legacy don't have a handicap or hurdle, they have an opportunity, oh fersure! That is, to make the beginning of a new legacy of gardening in their actual family, or with their friends, or even with their local community.

Makes me think of Canesister's original plan of a community garden which was ambitious and reduced wisely to starting a bit smaller first. But she most definitely has the beginnings of a community wide legacy.

Gardening legacy. With that, over the decades, the legacy grows and flourishes, the memory continues, and it is like having spirit children.

We inherit knowledge from our elders, and we inherit their love and enjoyments too.

"Daffydamdandelions"
What aunt Eleanor called both dandelions and daffodils. It's what her mother my grandmother I never met called them both, and her mother before her. So, I feel certain that small part of the old legacy may well be found somewhere in some hollow of that corner of the world where Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia are, a place where they say they are in Kentucky, but are actually just over the border. That's where my legacy of gardening began as it is, and long before I was born, before my mother was born, and before her mother was born, where there are other Mary Wilsons, other Alexander Hughes, other Swainsons. Plain, most plain and where down to earth really means hands dirty, knees dirty, wrinkled thick skinned faces grinning. I don't know why, but maybe it is a place where daffodils and dandelions grow and bloom together. Where swiping a cutting from your neighbor is ok, and you chuckle if you see the neighbor swiping cuttings from your garden. Long's they don't mess it up, and don't mess theirs up. Where Crimson Cushion Tomatoes are what makes sandwiches for lunch.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i'd been thinking about my grandpa the other day while i was starting my tomato seeds. i always remember my grandpa for his love of cherry tomatoes growing in 5 gallon buckets in their tiny back yard. i happened to mention this to my mom while i was asking her if there were any other types of tomatoes she wanted for her garden this year. he always took pride in those cherry tomatoes. i never got to love the taste of tomatoes till a couple years ago. guess what i had been growing was usually bland until i grew some other types and was picking and eating them just out of the garden. YUM!

grandpa used to love the grape jelly i made too. he always said it made him happy to see that i had the gardening bug and knew how to make stuff like that myself.