by June Matthies

Created on: May 19, 2009   Last Updated: October 26, 2009

My Great, True, Personal Garden Story must begin and end with my Grandmother. Unfortunately, I am some sorry kind of genetic throwback, born with a Brown Thumb. My Grandma, however, was a gardener with two thumbs green up to the elbows. Whatever she planted grew, in happy, fat profusion.

Grandma was not what you'd call a sentimental gardener. She spoke to her plants, but in a matter-of-fact tone, like she would speak to an acquaintance she happened to meet at the grocery store. She didn't inhale the perfume of a red rose and swoon with pleasure. She would nod to it in passing, as one part of the garden to another. There was one plant grandma would get lyrical about, and that was her Night Blooming Jasmine. On a summer dusk she would call me to an open window. "Smell that," she would say . "There isn't another smell in this world as wonderful as a Night Blooming Jasmine." As she would turn away from the window she would add, as if talking to herself, "I defy any one to smell my Jasmine and say there is no God."

Yes, Grandma was a faithful Baptist, and there was hardly one Sunday during the summer where some of God's (and her) handiwork was not gracing the altar. Roses, for sure, but also pansies, stocks, geraniums, and anything else deemed worthy for church.She would bring them, wrapped in wet paper towels with foil on the outside, and hand them off to someone with a more artistic style of arranging a nice flower vase. Grandma had no illusions of her flower arranging abilities.

I kept this secret close, though, because Grandma didn't like to talk about it. Every Memorial Day Weekend, my mother drove Grandma and I to the Veteran's Cemetery. Grandma didn't talk, or reminisce, or cry. She looked deep in thought as she lay the stocks and carnations from her garden on her husband's grave. The only thing I can remember her saying to me in all those Memorial Days was "Don't step on the graves. It's disrespectful." Then, we went to another cemetery to lay flowers on a two year old's grave. Grandma brought her stocks and carnations, but also purple-tinged baby's breath. She gazed at the grave silently until she felt it was time to go.When I watched my Grandma place flowers on loved one's graves, I never saw a more beautiful and heartfelt arrangement.

Grandma grew happy plants as well. She thought hollyhocks were a bit silly, but planted them all the same. She grew snap dragons of all colours, and demonstrated to me how by pinching the petals close to the stem,

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