Great granddad John was an avid gardener. He had to be. Raising six kids during the great depression certainly couldn’t have been easy. In order to keep plenty of food on the table, granddad John kept an enormous family garden that was over an acre in addition to the regular crops. Interestingly, he did this up until the year he died at the age of 97.
I don't have many good pictures of him, but here is my favorite. This was taken a couple of years before he died.
Check out the homemade Birkenstock shoes!
Granddad John was a thin, fit man with the thickest head of white hair I’ve ever seen. I am SO bummed that I didn’t get that one added to my gene pool! He had a soft spoken Southern Ohio lilt in his voice and a particular scent that was very comforting to me. Each summer, he grew peas, beans, carrots, a wide variety of onions, peppers, kohlrabi, potatoes, lots of herbs, cabbage . . . well, you name it, and he grew it. His tomatoes were wonderful and many a summer supper consisted of corn, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, bread and butter.
Granddad John taught me lots of little secrets about gardening; how to tell a budding weed from a new shoot of a flower or vegetable, the value of compost, and so much more. He always gardened organically realizing that pesticides and herbicides would end up in your in-sides. He was certainly ahead of his time. During the hot summer afternoons, we’d take a break from weeding or hoeing, and sit under a big oak tree growing at the edge of the garden and have some lunch and a nap. It was here that granddad John would tell me stories about his boyhood, meeting my great grandmother, Hattie, and quiz me on my bible lessons. He always had a kind word and wise advice for whatever little problem seemed to be bothering me, thus allowing me to ‘nip it in the bud’, as he was fond of saying.
Granddad John taught me other lessons too. Important lessons.
His daughter Authorene, my gran, also had quite a green thumb. She put out a garden each year as well, but living in the city meant that her garden was scaled back considerably. However, every inch of her yard was filled with a wide variety of flowers. Sometimes she would just throw the seeds with wild abandon and let them bloom wherever they decided to land. My gran taught me many things as well. With her, I learned how to put up garden bounty in Ball jars, how to make jam and jelly (yes, there is a difference), and how to bake. A brilliant woman in her own right always felt inferior because she only finished the 9th grade. I think in some ways she compensated by reading every single day – mostly her bible and gardening books.
Over a glass of lemonade once, on the porch swing one summer when I was on a break from university, she confided in me that if she had ever had the chance to attend college, she would have liked to study botany. That did not surprise me in the least and I’m certain that she would have done extremely well with a subject that fascinated her so much.
It seems that with my mother, Carlene, the gardening bug skipped a generation, but she has been known to keep a flower bed maintained once I put it in for her. The important life lessons continued with her, be kind, be loving, work hard, be honest.
My grandparents and great grandparents are long gone now, but I would hope that their many, many wise lessons stick with me. I hope that I am as good a man as my granddad John was. I hope that I maintain even half of his integrity, wit, wisdom, and love of life. I hope that I will always be as kind, loving, and nurturing as my gran and always keep her love of continued learning. I hope that I will always make them proud of the man I’ve become.
Once, when I was giving my mother a walking tour of my own garden, she told me that I was more and more like granddad John every day.
I hope so.
