Lives of Loveliness, the Loveliness of the Garden

When I was a little girl, we always had a garden. It was behind our barn and it was so big that my Grandpa literally plowed up the ground with his tractor every spring to get it started. Every morning he tilled it with his hoe and carried water to all the little plants.

When my sister and I were old enough, about five or six years old, Grandpa had us helping in the garden too. I remember I didn’t like hoeing so much, gut I did like picking off tomato works, and I did not mind picking vegetables at all. Of course eating all of the delicious food from our garden was its own reward.

My favorite vegetble is the sweet pea. When I was around 13 years old, I got it into my head that we should plant sweet peas in our garden. Afterall, we had carrots, onions, tomatos, squash, pumpkins, green beans and corn! Peas seemed to be the logical next vegetable to me. My grandpa tried to discourage me but I bugged him about it enough that he finally relented and together we planted an entire row of peas.

All that summer it was my job to take care of the little pea plants, to hoe them and make sure they had enough water. It was a lot of work and I’m sure I must have shirked some of my duties from time to time, but with my Grandpa’s help, we grew what I thought was a nice crop of peas!

When they were finally ripe my Grandpa told us that we could pick them. I know I was wondering whether we should plan to freeze the peas or can them, after we had a few for supper of course! My sister and I worked together to pick all of the peas off of the plants. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon chucking them out of their pea pods. You had to have pretty strong hands to do that and I remember that it was quite labor intensive. When we had it all done, we had only one kettle full of peas, and we ate those up for supper! There were none left over for freezing or canning.

It seemed funny to me to go through all of that time and effort to only grow enough of something to have one meal and I think my Grandpa knew that too (which is why he never grew any!) That experience has stayed with me all these years later. It has become one of my metaphors for life in that some goals might look worthy and interesting to pursue and go after, but you need to be sure that the time and energy put into that goal is going to be worth the ultimate result. Whether that be pursuing a degree, writing a book, following a job or even making a dress! Sometimes those things are indeed worth all of the time and effort even if the satisfaction you get from reaching the goal is brief, like eating those wonderful garden fresh peas for only one wonderful dinner! Othertimes you get to your goal and wonder if that’s all there is? I guess one of the tricks to life is deciding what you want to put your time and energy towards and if it is going to be worth it in the end.

And that was one of the many life lessons my Grandpa taught me, in his garden.

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