In my memory it was a bright, sunny summer morning. It must have been early, as I was supposed to be at the farm very, very early in the morning on the days I worked, but that morning I had a long drive. I had offered to bring my grandmother with me to spend a day harvesting at the small farm where I worked one day a week (in exchange for my weekly share of vegetables).
When I was little, my grandmother, or Mom-Mom as we called her, would escort me around her backyard, which featured one very large raised bed, though she never would have called it that. She grew mostly tomatoes, and sometimes cucumbers and other vegetables. I remember walking beside her among the tomato cages, examining the blossoms and speculating on the harvest. Likely we talked of the birds on the feeders, of which she had many. There was one big bird bath right beside the garden, and feeders all around the yard, and though it wasn’t until I met my partner that I became a “birder” in the full sense of the term, I think it was then I started to pay attention to the feathered things hanging about.
She grew prolific quantities of mint, which really is the only way to grow mint. But she had about seven varieties and loved to show them off. I can clearly remember the first time I tasted one. The mint grew in odd corners around the yard, and we were standing near the fence to the neighbors yard. She handed me a leaf and told me to eat it. I thought she was insane. First off, we were standing outside and she had just pulled off a leaf from something that looked, to my eyes, like a weed, and told me to eat it. Second, I must have been about six years old and had that aversion to green leafy things that so many small children harbor. But I ate it. And I sampled all the varieties- peppermint, spearmint, apple mint, orange, chocolate.
Later I would come to understand she had grown up on a farm, like a legit one with no electricity in the middle of nowhere, Texas. As she declined in health I tried to ask her the questions I should have asked when I was younger, but before I really understood. She told me about her ducks and chickens and cutting ice out of the river. We talked about canning and the best way to grow strawberries, and I showed her pictures of my chickens on my phone. In some ways it was too late for those conversations, as her health had already dramatically started to deteriorate. But I think she enjoyed reliving those times.
That day driving to the farm, I wish I had thought to ask her those questions. I was about twenty and just couldn’t think of anything to talk to her about, so I decided to put on music I thought would, if nothing else, be non-offensive. I’ve had a long passion for Patsy Cline, and I put on a best of cd as we were traversing the long miles of the eastern shore. She started to sing along. One of my all time favorite pastimes was to sing to Patsy Cline in the car, so I thought I’d sing along with her. But I stopped when we reached the song “Faded Love,” which I’ll admit I didn’t know that well. She sang every word, unconsciously, just because it struck some memory with her that she might not have even acknowledged. She was looking out the window at the passing farm fields, and I was likely just grateful to have found something we had in common. Now I wonder what she was remembering.
We spent a few hours at the farm picking tomatoes, and I can recall the towers of plants on either side as I went down a row to find her. She had one of those little blue pint containers in her hands, filled with cherry tomatoes, and she had probably eaten as many as she had picked. The sun was warm but filtered through the sky high vines, trellised into neat rows to make picking easier. I could hear birds somewhere off in the distance, at the edges of the fields, and the cows from down the lane.
I wish I had thought to ask her to teach me to can. She had mostly given it up by the time I was little, though I remember her cooking and making candy for every occasion in the molds that she kept. She loved the holidays, and for each one would plan some kind of party at her church, with menus for each, and hand made crafts to give to everyone who attended.
Later I would realize how much I had followed in her path. I started working on a farm in college, because I was vegan at the time and loved the veggies. I decided I wanted my own farm, and when my partner and I moved in on a 2 acre lot we started growing as many vegetables and fruits as we could manage. We got chickens and I’m still planning on getting ducks and maybe goats if we can find a house sitter that will take care of them. We put up almost all of our food, and grow as much of it as we can. My grandmother grew up on a ranch in Texas where they did grow all of their food, including chickens and ducks and the rest of it. She learned to put up preserves and make pies with lard, skills I taught myself over the years.
I wish I had taken the time when I was younger to make the trip to her house, and to learn from her while I could. But I think she imprinted the most important lesson to me at a young age, standing by the fence next to her patch of mint. I chewed a leaf from a non descript plant that someone had told me was edible. Who knew that years later, I would be standing in fields with a friend who happened to be one of the foremost foragers on the east coast (he might not like that description), eating random leafs from plants I couldn’t yet identify. Now my walks through the woods are punctuated with pauses while I reach for a tender shoot from a green briar patch, or a leaf or a berry I know to be good. We seek out elderberries every year for our annual batch of elderberry tincture (I swear to you it is the ONLY way to counter the flu), make wine from wineberries and wild blackberries, plant stands of milkweed and echinacea, and generally treat every space like a little garden. Around us are the birds we attract to the yard with flowers and native plants and feeders, especially the hummingbirds, who were her favorites, along with the cardinals that adorned her house in so many forms.
At the funeral yesterday my mother-in-law reminded me of the story of a woman who loses a dear relative and prays for a sign that they are all right, only to have a cardinal land on her hand. While I had been struggling for weeks (years) with the loss of my grandmother, who suffered so terribly from dementia, that reminded me of what I already knew- I would remember her every time I saw a cardinal, or a hummingbird alight on the feeder I keep outside my sewing room window every summer. I will remember her when I can tomatoes, when I harvest mint to make sun tea, and when I sit down at night to make crafts for those I love. She touched so many lives because she was always keeping her hands busy, making something special for everyone she knew. As I grow my garden, I will strive to follow her example.