How I Started to Love Gardening

My Mom and Dad loved the garden. That love came from their parents. Mom’s dad worked in and was proud of his vegetable and flower gardens. Dad’s mom always had a beautiful ornamental garden. I loved all types of gardens and also taught my children that love. Maybe it was being out in nature (which I found was my go-to always) but whatever the reasons, it was a passionate past time.

Of course, we had our vegetable garden at intervals through the years, but the consistent garden I remember was the ornamental and flower gardens. But with that vegetable garden came the canning and preserving that I loved learning from Mom. She would take us berry picking as many times as Dad would take us camping. Making ‘Snow Ice Cream’ was always a puzzle to me and intrigued me for year, trying to solve how Mom made that ice cream from snow. It sure seemed to taste better!

I remember having to go out to “weed the garden”. And it was probably a chore sometimes. But I do not remember having to work so hard in the garden that I got burned out. Mom and Dad did most of the work. I think that allowed my passion to grow, it was not a chore to me.

So, between my devotion to reading biographical and history books and Mom and Dad’s early gardening skills, I became passionate about gardening. My best gardening years was in a little 100-year-old log cabin that we rented for 6 years. I remember the flower that won a prize in the local fair one year after I had left the area. I had forgotten to take it, so I am glad it made someone happy! I had raised beds and great manure fertilizer at my disposal every year.

I proceeded to take my gardening passion with me to my next settlement. With our berries and vegetables and flowers, we had a very large garden area. That is when we decided to raise lambs for participating in 4H.

Eventually with one more move we ended up with a 1/4-acre garden. I have pictures but they are not digital yet. I wish I could find the picture of the domestic Turkeys we had one year. They were hilarious to watch!

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was said to say this: “A weed is but an unloved flower“.

*Ella Wheeler Wilcox Quotes (Author of Poems of Passion) (goodreads.com)

I appreciate that quote probably more than most, but I did weed my garden. My family became very quick ‘weeders’.

Even though I went through almost a quarter of a century with gardening on my own, (more years of course with my growing up years), I did lose my ability to have a garden consistently.

Going through a very long season without a garden has been very difficult. For many years I could not bring myself to buy my food. I still do not know how I survived and maybe, just maybe that was the reason my health started to decline. Now I am on the uphill of that decline, but I still do not have my garden. But my daughter has taken that passion up. I am just very picky on what I do purchase.

Getting healthy takes a lot of work. I think it would have been much easier to keep my passion going. But I did give up for a while. But that’s not the end of the story…