In the Garden: My Great Grandmother's Voice

It is early Summer. The air is warm and languid, and the only stirring is the brash buzz of a bumblebee going about his business.
I am on my Great-Grandmother’s porch, earnestly threading grass-blade arms onto my little doll, her skirt a downturned blossom, her pretty face a bud.
 I’ve been in the garden all morning, and I am perfectly content.



Whenever I catch a whiff of honeysuckle, or see a bee light on a billowing dahlia,
I still remember today the joy of being seven or eight years old at my Great Grandmother’s side
 in her lavish garden. We called her “Maw Maw,” but the townspeople of Paw Paw, West Virgina called her “May.”
 For all of the gifts this lovely woman bestowed, the gift of the garden
 with its lessons of patience and beauty, and the circle of life is the largest in my mind.

She was no dabbler, my Maw Maw.
She had vision and vigor; the part of her that loved music and stories
 and a well-portioned table required a very grand and personal garden.
 There were vegetables and a grape arbor, and an asparagus patch,
of course.
But the peony bed and the holly hocks that stretched down the little path
 to the smoke house
 were charming,
demonstrating her talent for cultivating beauty.


Mornings were for house-keeping, washing or baking,
but after the “Ten O’Clock Bite” (a delicious sandwich of cucumbers and dill with butter,
home made pickles, and Ice-Cold milk),
we spent hours a day on our hands and knees, tugging at the weeds,
studying the growth,
turning back a rose leaf for evidence of black spot or beetles.

Memories of standing next to her under the hot sun, smelling the freshly turned earth,
and watching those clever strong hands dart and tug and scoop still comfort me at times.
Once we even came upon a nest of baby rabbits, and we knelt, hushed,
and watched them sleep peacefully among the pansies.



If only I had paid more attention when her visitors came to call,
as she sat on the big front porch swing, spinning her gardener’s tales of insects
and sun and rain and loam.

But alas, I wandered away to sit under the maple tree to daydream
or stick seedpods under my nose,
or to read a book from her well-stocked library.
 Like so many others,
I am currently in hot pursuit of what was once a natural mother-lore ---
“grandmother wisdom.”

Alas, I must puzzle out garden mysteries on my own,
with the help of an evening course,
my own dear mother’s advice, or an armload of gardening books.



How I cherish the days now,
when something lovely blooms in my garden,
and I lead my own young son and his friends into the mysteries of the outdoors.
We’ll snap off a buttercup to determine who likes butter,
or we’ll cut a rose to take inside to watch it bloom on the table.
Blaine loves to find the face in a Pansy, and each time he does,
I hear my own precious Maw Maw’s voice,
stilled for over 25 years in the breeze
that stirs the leaves in my carefully planted flower beds.

Spearmint for tea and other wonderful recipes!

I am grateful that today I was able to photograph many of my graceful daffodils,
which were passed on to me
 from my Grandmother Robertson's Garden
 after she went to be with Jesus in Heaven in 1989.