by Stephanie Costello

Created on: May 16, 2009   Last Updated: October 26, 2009

Grandma's Garden

Long before I was old enough to retain a memory of it, my grandma tended a garden. She grew and canned her own food every year until she was well into her eighties. Grandma's garden fed her family in good times and lean. Through recessions, depressions and personal despair. Hers was no ordinary, sparsely populated patch that women grow today with a few tomatoes or strawberries. Walking through the splendor of my grandmother's garden was like being in a magical place - an all natural produce market without the fancy stands.

At the age of four or five, I began accompanying my grandma out to her enormous garden. It seemed like it took me forever to walk the length of it between towering beanpoles and walls of raspberries and snow peas. If something could be purchased as a seed, my grandma tried to grow it at least for one season. Sometimes she was met with success like when she grew rhubarb she made into pies. Sometimes without satisfaction because nobody would eat what she grew, like the potatoes that were literally blue in color.

I spent most of the summers of my childhood working side by side with my grandma in her special garden. My grandparents lived on a beautiful homestead on Lopez Island in a log cabin they built with their own hands. Immediately, my grandmother set aside her quarter acre of land and began preparing it to be planted. I have never seen a woman work so hard and diligently.

By the time I was old enough to pull weeds I would follow her out into the cool morning air, while dew was still on the leaves of the plants. We worked together, pulling weeds and estimating how soon it would be before we could harvest. She and I didn't say much. It was a quiet and reflective time for us both.

Every now and again she interrupted the silence with a perturbed declaration about some pest or another "getting to her beets" or "digging up her carrots."

"Good Lord!" Grandma exclaimed, her voice echoing from twenty feet away.

"What grandma!" I shouted back in alarm.

"Those darn rabbits keeping getting at my cabbage and I can't for the life of me figure out how they're getting in," answered with obvious annoyance.

She always gave me an exaggerated look of disbelief before she frowned and bent down again to scorn her bunny-ravaged produce. I had to suppress a giggle. I had seen that look a million times for just as many different reasons but it never failed to amuse me.

"Oh okay. I thought you got stung by

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