Where did you get your love of gardening?

My mother's relationship with dirt was geared toward one end...keep it off her floors and off her kids.

My dad was the guy in the garden. He came to NY when he was five from a little town in Sicily called Castlevetrano. Papa grew basil and tomatoes and onions and green peppers. And he grew eggplants and cagooch (I don't know how to spell it....it was a large green vine squash - shaped like a club) I remember peppermint and oregano too. He had a snail 'hootch' and he raised snails so that we could eat them in a hot spicy sauce or with wine and garlic and lemon and oil. I don't know where he got them ---or if he grew them...... but I know we ALWAYS had green olives on the counter in some kind of brine softening up. My father would eat anything that stood still... even my duck Pee Wee --the best spaghetti eating duck in the world. After the Pee Wee fiasco - I had to be forced to eat meat. Always worried about my anemia, my parents insisted I eat meat at supper. At dinner one evening, my brothers suggested I ask papa if he knew where my cat had disappeared to......My father just laughed - no denial - I guess those boys thought they were hilarious but those few seconds scarred me for life.... One day I got home from school and papa was in the Florida room... crouched down..peering out the screened door.. he was waiting patiently with a long rope in his hand.... the rope ran outside to the back yard and ended up tied to the door of a cage.. and inside the cage rested a big bunch of peeled bananas. My father told me he was trying to catch a monkey. Well....... we all thought he'd had a stroke.....or had become demented or something. This waiting and stalking went on for days and darn if he didn't catch that monkey a few days later!!!!! Honestly.. We learned that a neighbor across the waterway in Wilton Manors where we lived (in Fort Lauderdale) had a monkey that got away... good thing she heard about dad catching it...or it would have been monkey stew....and I would now have thousands invested in therapy.
but I am getting away from the point... my father grew fruit (melons, oranges, lemons, red and green grapes, and of course figs) and he grew veggies and herbs and made wonderful fragrant stews and sauces. In Brooklyn and in Saugerties (NY) he grew lilacs and chinese lanterns and snowballs. We had roses too. I recall marigolds and sweet peas too. There were many more flowering shrubs - I was quite young and I do not remember their names; but even today many fragrances quickly bring back vivid 'scent' memories of playing out in the front yard in Brooklyn when I was growing up.

This message was edited Feb 9, 2009 11:57 PM

Someone recently sent me a funny email that had the close up shot of a fortune from a fortune cookie, which said: "That wasn't chicken".

A neighbor hired me to pull weeds in their yard one summer when they went on vacation. They were on a triple city lot, so there was a plethora of weeds. It took me about two weeks to clear them all. One side of the yard had the strangest looking weeds I had ever seen...with these huge serrated leaves and they were about three feet tall. There were about 30 of them. It took everything in me to get rid of them, but I did it.

I heard the people come home very late at night. The next morning when we were having breakfast there was all this commotion coming from their yard. I opened the kitchen window, and I could hear the husband yelling, "MY ARTICHOKES ! MY ARTICHOKES ! WHAT HAS HE DONE WITH MY ARTICHOKES ?????"

I had never seen an artichoke in my life and no clue what they were.

Before I got to the end, I thought you were describing marijuana plants, which would have been an even bigger loss.

LOL, so did I Zuzu, I was expecting the husband to be yelling something completely different!

One of my neighbors grew some of those plants in the back corner of his garden. When they were ready to be harvested, the teenage boy next door to him leaned over the fence and harvested them. There was nothing my neighbor could do about it. He certainly couldn't call the sheriff.

Hi missing! your fathers Cooguts was a Zuchini squash.
As a German I have no idea how I knew that but I do.

German here too but I didn't know that!
missingrosie, loved reading your memories!

And I loved remembering them Sue (sort of)

I think there were a few squash types that we called Cooguts - but we pronounced 'ga-goots'

http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=Rooyt3ptNco&feature=email
This is waaaaaay sweet but wonderful.
Reminds me of when I was 8years old, I had a faun for the summer.

missingrose - loved your stories about your dad and the monkey story was so funny!

JD - I saw that one, too!

Zuzu - I was thinking the exact same thing! My idiot sister allowed my nephews to grow them among the tomatoes. Jerk!

Thanks, Jo Ann. Loved Satchmo!

Thanks for that video I loved it - so will the rest of my family.

Jo Ann....
That was wayyyyyyy beautiful.
Looks like my Jazzy cat.

Sweet video! I always get sucked in to clicking more related videos and end up spending way too much time there though.

I think that's what they want you to do ! LOL

That is the sweetest video, Jo Ann, and I loved the music. Thanks.

The monkey story was hilarious, missingrosie. I read it to my husband, and he told me to keep that in mind next time I questioned his menatl health.

Very touching video. Would that humans could do the same.

I don't have any pictures of this and I haven't even witnessed it personally, but my cat Montgomery is rumored to run with the deer. We have small valley deer living in my neighborhood, and my neighbors across my back fence have told me they see Monty running with the deer on their property in the morning, after which they all fall into a heap and take a nap together.

Zuzu, Montgomery is a beautiful cat. In all my life with cats, I don't think I have ever seen one with such unusual coloration. How pretty.

I was raised in hotels until I was about 14, as my Dad was a hotel manager. The closest I came to plants were potted palms in the lobby. I did love going to Central Park, though, and thought the plants were beautiful, even the weeds (what did I know)?
In the summers I began to visit with my Aunt Laura and Uncle Roy. They kept beautiful gardens and he was a winner in many dahlia shows. Her roses were beautiful because they had a drought and she used dish water to water them. That was in the days of phosphates in soap powder and her roses never bloomed more beautifully.
When we moved to Savannah, after a couple of years in the hotel there, we bought a bungalow on a tidal creek. I began to garden a bit and go crabbing a lot. I knew nothing about amending soil, just dug a hole and stuck a plant in and used 8-8-8. With a little success, I was up and running. The tall periwinkles were the easiest to grow for a novice.

Thank you, Sharon. This is his brother Rorschach:

Elusive little cat, isn't he?

I'll try that one again.

It's funny that the picture didn't show up, because Rorschach was very shy for the first five or six years of his life. My sister came over a dozen times through the years without ever getting a look at him. She used to call him my imaginary cat.

Where did your aunt and uncle live, Woodspirit?

Oh...how great! His color patterns are just the opposite of Montgomery's. Great name for him.

Of course you could have called them Roar and Shark.....

I have one cat who is so totally nuts, every time I tear a piece of aluminum foil, he runs under the nearest bed and will not show his face for hours. It simply terrifies him. And he mumbles and chatters constantly, so I mumble and grumble back at him. We make a great couple.

Roar would be a great name because he has a tiny kitten meow.

Aluminum foil would be a good behavior modification tool for my cats. They're all afraid of it. It ranks right up there with the vacuum cleaner (not that they hear much of that).

I guess almost all cats hate the vacuum cleaner. When I adopted Tootsie, the shelter documents included this description: "Domestic long-hair brown tabby; not afraid of vacuum cleaners."

And do your cats go on wild streaks of fur through the house with hardly a touch of their paws to the floor? I swear, Jazz will get on on one of his running fits and fly through the air like a bird gone rampant. He hits the back of every chair then bounces his way to the next one. Never touches the floor. And he goes in circles....couch to recliner, to other recliner, to chair , to computer desk, to couch again. I just now thought of putting a strip of aluminum foil on the backs of the furniture. I think he has a severe mental problem, or maybe springs in his feet.

It is nearly 4 a.m. Good grief, I forgot to go to bed. Think maybe I should do that now.

Nitynite Sharran.
I'm just up.
Love the cat pics.

I enjoyed the cat photos, too.

My cats periodically do that weird psycho "bolt all over the house" thing.
It's like they're possessed or something. It's very eerie.

They have over 9,000 muscles that help them jump, gotta keep them in shape with flying walenda exersizes.
Thats also why they sleep a lot.

We had two Lhasa Apsos that used to do that. Fannie Mae was much better at it than Ginnie Mae. Fred and Mac (collies) never did it in the house but often did it outside. Flying fur balls!

Horses bolt and jump too.I really think its to ease the boredome.

So cats getting along with deer must not be an abnormality. Who would have thought?

Jazzy would get along with nobody. Only Daisy can make him behave, believe me. Somehow he thinks she is his mother.

Good Grief! We are having major wind storm today. 60mph wind is no fun. It nearly slam dunked me into the columns out front. We even had no power for 3 or 4 hours already today. Think I am going to find a cave and move in, but then the earthquakes would come along......

Well since this has strayed a bit, (as all good threads do!), this is my Penny just before her much needed trip to the groomer this morning, can barely see her chocolate eyes. For any of you that don't know, any guess to her breed?
She's about 2 lbs. over her ideal weight and she really looks like a teddy bear when she gets to this shaggy point.

LOL!

First choice, Lhasa but she seems too tiny to be a Lhasa.

Second choice, Shitzu.

Third choice, stuffed toy that looks real.

baby poodle

Sharran got it, except for the baby part, Penny is a tiny toy apricot poodle, she'll be 4 end of the month. Here she is just home from the groomer. She should be around 5-5.5 lbs, she's closer to 7.5. We'd both do better with more walking, less snacking. ^_^