Spring Memories

Talking with a friend last weekend about putting in a garden brought back small but wonderful memories of spring. Every year my mom grows a large garden, even now. Just today, in fact, she was telling me about needing to call the neighbor who tills it for her because "if it rains this weekend, it would be so nice to start planting next week."

I often helped mom plant in the garden. Planting peas was my favorite job. Pea seeds look like small, hard, peas that soaked too long in the bathtub. They were a purplish-green color, if memory serves me correctly. When I was very young, mom didn't want me to plant the peas too close together, so she would find a thin twig and break off a section about an inch long. "Put the peas this far apart," she instructed. Being the rule-follower that I am, I took her exactly at her word. I would lay a pea seed down, place the tiny stick so it was just brushing up against the seed, and carefully place another pea seed on the very tip of the stick. Then I'd carefully pick up the stick, move it just to the other side of the seed I had just laid down, and repeat. Several years passed before I trusted myself enough to just hold the stick out every-so-often to make sure I was eye-balling the distance correctly. Mom practically planted the rest of the garden in the time it took me to plant three or four rows of peas.

When harvested, the peas rarely made it into a cooking pot. Instead, mom would put out a simple bowl on the table full of peas in the pod, with an smaller empty bowl beside it. We'd all just grab a handful of pods, shell the peas right into our mouths, and discard the pods in the empty bowl. That's the way to eat natural and organic, let me tell you.

Planting tomato plants was another favorite job. Mom usually got about 20-25 plants (yes, that's a lot of tomatos, folks). She'd plant them early enough that they often need protection from a few cold spring nights and the strong spring winds. Being the frugal woman my mom it, she made little tomato shelters from gallon milk jugs. When the bottoms were cut out, she'd slip the jug over the planted tomato, pushing dirt up around the sides to anchor it. The plants happily grew in their little white houses until leaves started to peek out the top.

Mom didn't get new jugs each spring, oh no. She saved them from year to year on a several long pieces of looped baling wire, almost like a gigantic necklace with milk jugs for beads. (The uses for baling wire on a farm are endless...just as good as duct tape, I tell ya). It was usually my job to go to the duck barn (which never housed any ducks that I can remember) to retrieve the dusty ring of jugs and clunk across the farm to the garden. I certainly wasn't sneaking up on anyone with all the racket I made.

So there you have it...a bit of spring reminiscing for the day. Makes me want to dig my hands in damp, newly turned soil as I type. Ah, spring...