garden memories

This was meant to be an invitation for you to share your own childhood garden memories - please share!

Hearing gretagreta talk about using globemaster alliums as magic wands when she was little made me remember a bunch of great garden memories from when I was little, too...

Grandma's house:
red currants and the jelly she made...elderberries and the mess!!....luscious, transparent red raspberries warm from the sun, they burst in our mouths! ...radishes - because they were so quick to grow....Day lilies - taller than me (musta been ditch lilies)...Iris - always fascinating because they were sooo tall and so many colors on one plant - they were "Wabash" and quite lovely - if anyone has a Wabash they could trade I have several others to trade back...

Home:
sitting in a bed of myrtle when it was in bloom in my favorite "Alice in Wonderland" dress with a full skirt and playing princess... making crowns of sweet clover and daisies... picking violets in the woods with my mom ...
listening for the wren, which meant summer was right around the corner...hearing the katydids which signalled that summer was almost over...Daddy's hummingbird feeder, which fed bees and other interesting wildlife too...Fuschias near the hummer feeder... what a show!...Cleomes that they could not eradicate - I used to get 10 cents for weeding the brick walks my mom laid by hand and most of what I was getting out of there was cleome...the smell of fever few baking in the sun...daffodils!...putting a dandelion under your chin to see if you like butter...being fascinated with lungwort because it had two different colors of flower on the same plant...wild roses Daddy transplanted from back in the woods on the edge of the creek...poison ivy all over my bottom from sitting in the myrtle and not noticing the poison ivy there too!...eating tiny sour green Jonathan apples off the tree in our yard... weeding in Momma's herb garden, listening to the humming of her flowers (Bee Balm)and having the scent of the catalpa blossoms falling all around us as we worked...

the list could go on and on, thanks, gretagreta for sparking my often failing memory...

This message was edited Thursday, Jul 31st 1:42 AM

Lovely memories; playing with the "doll" hollyhock blooms, bringing back bouquets of wild roses to my Grams (foster mother), picking wild raspberries and asparagus; eating the crabapples ,not quite ripe, while sitting in the tree. Thanks for triggering the memories.

My second memory (the first was being carried downstairs during a tornado) is being 4 and staring into a ornamental cherry blossom for what seemed like hours. I was totally fascinated. I also remember the neighbor's irises and lily of the valley blooms. We lived in a housing project and there was a huge lawn that was perfect for kids playing EXCEPT a bed of petunias ran through the middle of it and we caught hell if we ran into it. It has taken me almost 50 years to like petunias again. I went to a Catholic school and each class had a May altar. Everyday the students brought in fresh flowers - daffodils, tulips, lilacs, etc. The sight and the smell were heavenly.

Grandma's house:
being given a knife for the first time and told to go out and pick all the asparagus in the asparagus bed that was over three inches long. She even gave me a stick that was three inches and taught me how to be safe with that knife. How I loved that asparagus we had for dinner that night!
Playing with the flowers from the waterlilies at the lake cottage. They were used as ropes, belts, hair decorations,and swimming suit ornaments as well as table decorations.
Listening to the caragana seed pods popping when they got dry. I thought it was a funny sound and I would laugh and laugh.

Our yard:
Learning to use a lawn mower in our yard and getting paid $15 a month (in 1964) to mow the church lawn!
Planting petunias along the walkway
Planting pansies and brushing back the snow in the winter to see they were still blooming and picking Mom a bouquet for Christmas.


Friend's yard:
Eating vegi's fresh from the garden (first experience at that)
Picking huge bouquets of flowers for her church's altar
Turning over 100 rabbits loose at her neighbor's house during the night because we heard they were going to butcher them the next day. LOL
Helping her Grandma weed and her singing to us the whole time we were with her. (beautiful voice to a 9 year old)


Happiness

Tying together those little white flowers in the grass to make necklaces, bracelets, and tiaras. Never did find out what those tiny flowers were.

Summer vacation...curled up in my favorite tree and reading a good book all day.

My family doesn't garden. My Grandmother grew carnations in a planter, and that's about it (except for the required St. Joseph Lilies). My Dad hates gardening (some kind of trama from his childhood, I suspect)

I remember one year Mom planted Zinnias. She always said she had a "black thumb" and nothing she planted would grow. Well, the Zinnias grew! They were tall. They were plentiful. They were beautiful, and she was so proud. We were only allowed to admire them from afar.

Then the little neighbor girl came along and "picked" them all. By the roots! And presented my Mother with a "bouquet". OMG! She cried and cried!

And that was the end of gardening at our house.

Apparently, my great Grandmother was a great gardener, but I never knew her. I get compared to her a lot (which isn't always a good thing, since she is more well remembered for her temper than her garden LOL).

Cheri'

I remember planting an avocado seed in the rental house all the family lived in during WWII. I was about 4. When my grandfather built his house after the war, he moved my seedling. Imagine my surprise when I came back as a 15 year old to find the tree tall and bearing fruit in his backyard! He was a truck gardener, but had a few flowers even after my grandmother died. I can still smell the night-blooming jasmine coming in my bedroom window and the big half-barrell full of glossy, showy and fragrant gardenias in the front yard.

I too made clover chains to wear as necklaces. Also, I remember the tall, red cockscomb and the low growing thrift my grandmother had. Buttercups stuck in our nose as a joke, making queen anne's lace many colors by putting cuttings in water with food coloring. Shaking the dried pods of poppys to make music. Digging Jerusalem artichokes to pickle, boy they were good as were the crabapples we pickled in salt water. What a great thread, I had forgotten all those things!

My parents didn't garden when I was little, except to grow tomatoes, but neighbors did, so most of my memories are of that.

Gathering 4 o'clock seeds to use as hand-grenades in our ongoing war of GI Joe vs Barbie (I had brothers!)

sneaking into my best friends' garden to smell the flowers (can't remember what kinds, but they smelled wonderful)

I spent much of my childhood playing and exploring in the woods. I got to know the trees, mayapples, wild strawberries and raspberries, mulberries (I can still remember being completely purple!), wild roses, poison ivy, you name it! My happiest memories are of spending months in the woods in our town. Too sad that they are all gone.

Our neighbor grew beautiful wisteria vines. She had three, blue, white and a red one. They would hang over the fence into our yard, especially the blue. I remember that the bees were so plentiful around them that we were cautioned to stay clear of them. Of course, I couldn't. I would sit underneath the overhang of wisteria blooms, watching the bees come out of the flowers. I didn't know what they were called, so I called them bee flowers.
As a small child, I thought that that was where bees came from.

Cheri'