Earliest garden memories ...

Aside from roses and bugs, the thing I most remember are the clods of dry dirt that would "explode" when I threw them; they made fine "grenades." I threw a lot of them.

I don't remember much at my house but a big patch of dirt in the back yard. That's what happens when you have 5 brothers -- it was sort of in the shape of a baseball field and we used it to play all sorts of games (along with every kid in the neighborhood).

But I do remember my grandmaother's house. My grandfather had been a farmer (the 'bean king of Long Island') and though by the time I came along he'd died and a good part of the land was sold and becoming tract housing, they still had a pretty good sized veggie garden from which they would sell corn and the like from a stand by the street. There were not a lot of flowers, though. Guess farm families don't have much time for flowers.

Funny, my mother had 10 green thumbs, but since she'd grown up working in the fields she contented herself with houseplants -- lots of them, many exotic and all grew like crazy.

I remember lots and lots of dahlias. My mom has always had huge dahlia gardens. All kinds of carnations, lillys of the valley, hyacinths, chrysanthemums, roses, a lilac bush, and several rhododendrons. My mom had her gardens planted so that there were always flowers blooming no matter what time of the year it was. There were fruit trees and at the back of the yard was a patio with trellis over it, but I can't remember what was growing all over it. In the middle of the patio was a huge evergreen tree with one of those wooden bench-type seats built around the base of the trunk. There was also a hedge that hid the driveway from the main part of the back yard.

I know that the yard was pretty big, but the house wasn't really.

dirt, dirt and dahlias! fine memories. We only lived in that house until i was about 4, so my memories of everything there are off-size. The house we moved to had a double lot - which was mostly veggie garden and rose beds. I remember lots and lots of work - helping to double-dig the beds - jumping up and down on the shovel to get it down through the clay.

Roses, roses, roses, my memories of my mother's garden were the beautiful roses. In Colorado my Aunt Pearl's garden was wonderful. In the summer the front year was fenced by holly hocks, day lilies, and various varieties of wild flowers (lots of columbines and indian paint brush) and there were roses of course. But it was the vegtable garden that I loved, yum. The orchard now that was a different story I used to eat Queen Anne cherries until my stomach ached.

hmmmm, that sounds like a tasty memory, JoanneDorel.

I was so nice and I really have so many good memories. I forgot to add that in the morning my Aunt would have fresh sliced peaches with cream for me. Spoiled I was.

And I have fond memories of eating fresh picked green beans and peas right out of the pod. Yummy (but not as yummy as fresh peaches).

Gees Joanne, did you have someone to feed them to you also. Roughed it in the orient down by Bombay, ahhhhhhhhhh the memories!

Let us hear more about the gardens in Bombay BillW.

Joanne...

Your post about the peaches reminded me of the summers I spent at my grandparent's house in Yakima (Eastern WA). It was always really warm, so the windows stayed open all night, and in the morning when the sun came up, you could smell the fruit growing on the trees in the orchards...apples, peaches, and grapes on the vines. We used to go pick tomatoes and cucumbers and cantaloupe and watermelon and then we'd go back to my grandmother's house and she and my mom and my aunts would all can the peaches and tomatoes and make pickles while all of the kids sat outside eating the watermelon...We'd get to eat the cantaloupe for breakfast...It was very hot, and a lot of work for the adults, but it smelled sooo good!

BTW...My grandparents always had lots of roses and shade trees in their yard/gardens.

Joanne,

Actually, they were in Indonesia. Just sit back with a little gin and tonic or a Bintang Baru and watch the gardners do their thing. It made me feel bad; but as it was pointed out, if I did it, they wouldn't have anything to do and then they wouldn't have a job.

So I just had another one, just like the other one, smiled and stayed out of the way!

very precocious, weren't you, BillW!

The only green that I can muster after hearing your garden tales is envy. I was never a good gardener. When I was a kid, about the only thing that I could grow were radishes.

Oh, yes. there is something. We have another house in Florida. where my mom lives. It used to be our vacation place until we moved here permanently. When we first got there, in 1987, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a yucca plant that fit on the seat of our car.

Inadvertently, I planted it at a corner of the house, right near a downspout. I have neither watered nor fed it. The plant is a MONSTER. It is just about to the top of the house, and gets bigger every year!

This is sort of what it looked like when I first bought it.

Bill W - is your avatar from The Jungle Books?

I grew up with a big garden - wild at the back - tame and suburban at the front.

My mother loved gardening - especially trees - and my father wanted a blank, tree-free desert. While she was alive my mother won.

We had a sometime creek at the very back - with a huge row of poplars and a big round concrete drain which, if you braved the spiders and boogy persons - ( I was the only girl who did) - led to the back yard of the people across the street.

Across our back fence was the HUGE and rambling - (but digressing from formal bones) - garden of our neighbours - a children's paradise which we were allowed to run around in whenever we wanted. There was an enormous (to us) fish pond with huge multi-coloured carp and water lilies. Heaven!

A close friend lived in a large, decaying, mansion up the road, with an acre or more of garden - (including one of those Norfolk pines which one climbs and climbs and climbs and climbs, as though it were a spiral staircase, until one reaches the thin branches at the top - but from which - several stories up - one can see the world laid out like a map.........) and a multi-acre olive grove, complete with a creek, a salvaged WWII aircraft - (upon which we were strictly, and totally ineffectually, ordered not to play) and the requisite number of terrifying men hidden from time to time - from whom we ran like so many quail.....

dlowan asks:

Bill W - is your avatar from The Jungle Books?

http://www.white-wolf.com/ Pretty cool, huh! The larger size is better!

In Bombay, WA, most of the formalized garden seemed to be the big perennial bed in front. My mother would spend hours there, tending roses and irises and a lot of other flowers. It overlooked the bay, but she never ventured there (couldn't swim and didn't boat). The garden was what she liked. There were three large Royal Anne cherry trees. Those were my spot if I weren't on the bay. I could climb to the highest branches in each of them. Some were a little scary and I'd have to work up my courage to go up, then gather it together again to get back down. But I never did fall.

Sounds wonderful,
I close my eyes
Look deep into my soul -
Returning to my youth
I am at the top of your Cherry Tree!
This is an amazing view- WOW!

:wink:

You may not know this, but cherry tree branches are very brittle. It is a hard climb, but the view is definitely worth it...

I am sorry to report that my bitter old step mother lpoisoned those trees -- for reasons only known to herself. She poured gallons of brushkiller on them and on their roots, the vicious thing. Said they were interefering with the drains. Only one remains and it is in sorry condition.