Making a garden

I remember walking down the rows in the garden Mommy and Daddy made before Mommy had to get a job at the dress factory.  This was back when she was a housewife and had the energy to have a huge garden.  I remember that the pole beans were so tall.  They were on poles that were taller than Mommy and Daddy, and there was netting strung between the poles, and the plants were full of beans.  I remember Mommy getting bowls of those beans and then snapping them into sections (or snapping them somehow . . . I can't remember exactly.)  I remember fried green tomatoes, fried zucchini, and fried summer squash from those gardens.  I remember spaghetti squash.  I remember helping to weed.  I remember eating carrots with Daddy - straight out of the ground, not even washed, just wiping the dirt off with our hands.

I think these big gardens were while Pepper (the pony) was still at our house because Mommy and I were in the garden when I found out that Brownie had died.  Daddy had found her body up behind Pepper's pen.  I remember how much Mommy loved to make gardens.

She didn't have the energy anymore after she started working at the dress factory.  She used to just sit on the couch and fall asleep when she got home from work.  She was so tired all the time.  She was too tired to make big gardens, but she still had her little flower gardens. Some of them she surrounded with rocks.  Didn't she make at least one in a big tractor tire, too?

Now, Mommy still can enjoy a little bit of the feel of dirt and stone.  She arranged all the stones in the pot in the above picture (after I repotted it for her).  It's not a big garden or a lot of stones and dirt, but I think the love of gardens and patting dirt and arranging rocks is still there.  I think she really loved getting her hands dirty and caring for her plant.