A Bit of Earth

The picture that you see is a tiny butternut squash that I am currently growing in our raised beds.  This year, I took charge of the garden, and butternut was a must.  It's one of my favorites.

In the book, "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Mary Lennox does not want dolls or toys to pass the time.  Instead, she asks, "Might I have a bit of earth?"  I feel like Mary sometimes.  I've found that I am happiest and most at peace when I'm working outside, planting things and watching them change and grow. I learned almost all I know of gardening from my grandmother, Rose Hatcher.  She grew up on a farm in Tolar, Texas.  Almost all the food they had, they grew, and they canned and stored things in a root cellar.  Later in life when she found herself living alone in town, she made the most of her residential plot and created a huge garden every year.  I can still smell the tomatoes and okra, which grew to at least five feet tall if not taller.  I remember neat rows of onions and summer peaches.  And I remember sitting with her in her kitchen with the back door open while she snapped beans or shucked corn.

Now that I have my own kids, I have a huge herb and flower garden and my husband built a small section of raised beds.  For some reason, this year I have really been bitten by the gardening bug and can't seem to stop finding spaces to put things.  Any nook or cranny will do.  The raised beds have butternut and yellow squash, radishes, roma tomatoes, bell peppers, peas, and beans.  And zinnias.  (Hey, companion planting, right?)  I've also planted calla lilies, moonflowers, Rebecca clematis, pink climbing roses, sage, mint, basil, and a fir tree that my son thought would look great in the middle of my amaryllis plot.  It had to be uprooted and repotted...but I'm hoping for a living Christmas tree at some point.  Lavender, Banana Cream shasta daisies, sombrero blanket flowers, and Big Max pumpkins (what was I thinking?  They grow up to 100 pounds.  I know...I should have done it sooner!) round it out.

I'm grateful for the time I get to spend outside, and I'm grateful to my grandmother for passing her knowledge onto me.  If only she could see me now...did she ever think that the weekends she spent with her granddaughter would turn into something like this?  I only remember that going to her house was fun, because she paid attention to me and treated me like I was important.  She included me in everything she did, and even though she's gone, what she gave me will last forever, because I will pass it on to my kids, too.