Sepia Saturday: Hoe Hoe Hoe

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt is the garden.  My maternal grandmother Lucille Rucker Davis always had beautiful flowers and delicious tomatoes growing side by side.  Her garden was not the beautifully planned and dedicated space that drives aficionados of Pinterest to pin and repin.  But she did know the value of digging a $5.00 hole for a 50¢ plant.

Grandma on Easter Sunday 1967

As I looked for pictures to show off Grandma’s beautiful camellias and peonies, I just laughed at the sorry state of her flower beds.  Sadly, we didn’t catch them in their glory.  Our pictures are of beds that needed weeding and a little mulch.   In my mind’s eye, though, I see the sparkle of white Spirea in bloom.  Camellia bushes bursting with pink and red blooms.  Blue hydrangea bending under their own weight.  Tulips and daffodils.  Tall gladiolas in pink, purple, white, and yellow held upright with a stick.  Forsythia in March.  Azaleas in April.  Creeping Phlox and Candy Tuft dotted here and there to mark the outer limits of foundation beds.

I LOVED that purple plaid dress.  And Grandma's flowers, of course.

Grandma didn’t invest a lot of time in a vegetable garden.  She simply made room in the flower beds for a few tomato plants because even in the 1960s good tomatoes, “real” tomatoes, were not to be had in the grocery store.  She also had a reliable fig tree that supplied all she needed for everyone’s anticipated gift of fig preserves.

Maybe it is Grandma’s influence that makes gardening and canning appeal to me.  When my girls were little, we had a square foot garden.  It was fairly successful and certainly easy to manage.  But when we moved to our current house, I lost all interest in gardening as rabbits took over the garden, and softball and horse shows took over our lives.

Zoe and Jordan April 1985

Now the girls are grown and gone. I’m retired.  I have a new fence.  And a square foot garden.

Last year at this time, I was busy planning my younger daughter’s October wedding.  I don’t know who had the bright idea to decorate with white pumpkins, but I thought for sure it would be easy to grow our own, and cheaper too than buying them in the fall.  So I purchased seeds and dedicated most of the squares to pumpkin plants. 

Of course, I had to save room for a few tomatoes and peppers because the grocery stores still don’t sell “real” tomatoes.

In July, my pumpkins were coming along really well. 

The next thing I knew, my garden looked like the set of a B-movie, some sci fi flick in which pumpkin plants devour Chicago.

In the end, I got a handful of Baby Boo pumpkins and only one Lumina, losing all the rest to rot. 

One Baby Boo was the perfect "paper weight" for cocktail napkins.

One Baby Boo added a little sumn sumn to the cake table.

I didn’t inherit Grandma’s green thumb, but I got her hoe and watering can.

I’ve planted the seed, so please visit my friends at Sepia Saturday to see what is blooming in the blogisphere.

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.