“How Does Your Garden Grow?”

For the first time in 40 years I am without a backyard garden. It’s kind of weird not having one, for I always looked forward to putting my hands into the soil each spring. There is something truly rejuvenating watching green buds poke through the earth after a cold and colorless winter.

My husband, Steve, and I decided to tear down the raised beds we built, in part because the old wood frames no longer held the dirt the way they were suppose to, but also because we plan to move from the family home within a year and wanted to give the newly planted grass a summer to grow.

Still, I hated to see the garden go. It felt like letting go of something that has been important to me for a long time. At 65, I get that feeling more and more, of realizing that it makes sense not to have so much stuff or to live in a house that is too big for us. It’s all part of moving towards life’s final phase. Some days it’s okay, other times I don’t like how it feels.

I got my love for gardening from our father, as did many of my siblings who garden. On many summer evenings after dinner, Dad would walk to his garden. Maybe he’d pull a few weeds or pick whatever was ripe, or, if it was a particularly dry summer, water the tomatoes. I don’t think he ever watered the entire garden, probably because water cost money, but he’d water the tomato plants. The watering paid off, because for many years Mother canned more than a hundred quarts of tomatoes.

Garden 1950

The size of 828’s garden varied through the years, first taking up most of the back yard, and then, as the kids grew and needed space to play, was shortened, and then shortened again, until it took the form I remember most: currant bushes at the back and two bushy rows of rhubarb on each side. Dad always planted lettuce in the row closest to the house, Black Seeded Simpson, and on many summer days our dinner (lunch) was a lettuce sandwich between two pieces of buttered bread, Mother’s favorite.

Garden: 1958

Tending and harvesting the garden was very much a part of my growing-up years. Dad always did the planting. In fact, as the garden shrunk, he planted in several other locations, most regularly behind his parents’ home on Foraker, but only until 1960, when Grandma Kerber died and the house was sold. Then he had a garden two streets over on Chestnut, behind Mrs. Farrell’s house, and, for a short time, one across town up Court Street hill, near Dingham.

828 and Dad's three other gardens

And from Dad’s planting came much of the kids’ summer labor, picking currants and being careful not to get stung by the bees, breaking grocery bags full of green beans, coring baskets of squishy red tomatoes.

One of the gardening jobs I disliked most was turning the Foley food mill, from which was wrung the tomato juice we drank throughout the winter. I can still remember the tiny stings on my forearm turning the crank when the mill was full. It was hot sweaty work, and I could never grind the tomatoes dry enough to satisfy Mom, for when I was finished, she’d give the handle some swift hard turns and out would come the thickest pulp.

I’ve been tending a garden of my own ever since I was married 40 years ago, and like my mother often canned and froze the harvest.  But not this year. That’s over…  kind of.

It wasn’t long after Steve and I dismantled the raised beds and seeded grass that I bought two large containers for our deck and planted some herbs and a half-dozen tomato and pepper plants. They won’t produce enough for preserving, but at least I won’t be buying store-bought tomatoes yet.

Sixty-five is a bit too early to let go of something I’ve enjoyed for so many years.

—Text by Linda

—Graphics by Bob