with Mary Lynn Lambert
This week Rebecca Gloyd writes, “Silerton is a farming community. Almost everyone has at least a vegetable garden every year. I have tried to grow plants: tomatoes, petunias, whatever. It never seems to work out well. When I first moved here, Gail Mayfield gave me a huge pot for growing tomatoes. Her husband, Bill, drilled holes in the bottom. I filled it with good, rich-looking soil and planted three healthy tomato plants in it.
After several weeks of careful nurturing, two plants died, and the other one presented me with a single, strange-looking tomato with two lobes. That is the same year that I spent $50 on flower bulbs from the Breck’s catalog. I was so excited when they came in. There were tulip bulbs, bulbs for tall round purple things, crocuses and other great stuff. I planted them in the yard and awaited their colorful splendor. It never happened. Most of them died, and the others taunt me yearly by sending up nothing but scraggly leaves. I have always wanted to have a beautiful flower garden. I am haunted by the memory of a heavenly garden I used to visit, in Columbia, Mo.
I was only four or five years old when we lived there. It was just around the corner and a couple of houses down from us. I would be outside playing in our backyard and think about it. Mother always told me to stay home. I would look around to see if she was watching and then hurry down the sidewalk to the magical lattice archway that brought me into the fairyland of flowers. The garden was surrounded by a white picket fence and took up the entire backyard. Some of the flowers were huge. They were twice as tall as me and all different colors. There were smaller types, too, but I can not place any species looking back on it now. To me, they were just flowers, a whole world of them! I would be almost intoxicated by their beauty. I would glance at the house. No one ever seemed to notice me, probably because I was so small and hidden among the bushes and plants. I would stay as long I dared and then hurry back home before I was missed. Twice, I remember, Mother scolded me severely for disobeying her, but I was never really punished for it. Then again, maybe I have been punished. I can’t grow plants.”
It would be appreciated if you would call and share some of your news and thoughts or memories so we can stay connected.
