by T Marie Allman

Created on: August 24, 2009   Last Updated: October 23, 2009

I hated gardening when I was a child. My mother had a giant vegetable garden in the back yard and she made me help her pull weeds and cultivate the soil around the plants. When I complained, she would tell me that the best food is the food you grow yourself. She would tell me that it was good for me to work for what I would eat, to not have everything clean and ready on a grocery store shelf. I thought it was boring and hot and had no problem buying vegetables someone else had grown. Though I told my mother I didn't want to help in the garden, I never voiced my true feelings about it. It meant a lot to my mother, so I kept my thoughts to myself and sweated.

When harvest time came, I would help my mom pick beans and pull carrots. I helped clean them and watched as she canned them for use over the winter months. As my mother worked, she would tell me stories of her childhood. Her family had been poor. So poor, in fact, that one month all they had to eat were bread, mayonnaise and potatoes. She would tell me she was glad to have made a better life for her children. I would nod my head and try to imagine what it would be like to eat plain potatoes and mayonnaise sandwiches. I had no idea what it meant to truly have nothing. It was a concept I could imagine, but not truly understand.

I spent my childhood watching seeds grow into mature plants. I learned how to identify a perfectly ripe cucumber or sweet pepper. I did not consciously think about what I was learning, it just happened with time. Neither did I think of the time I spent in the garden with my mother as 'quality time.' We were simply doing something that needed to be done.

I eventually grew into an adult and left my parent's home. I unknowingly took with me many of the things my mother had tried to teach me. I found myself gravitating to farmers' markets for fresh produce and co-ops for naturally grown food. And then the unimaginable happened. I started a garden. I had tomatoes, potatoes and lettuce. My husband tolerated, and eventually learned to accept the time I spent 'puttering' in the garden. He did not grow up with gardening parents, so he does not understand why it is so important to me to grow my own food.

Although I live in town, I have plenty of gardening space. We have grapes and currants, kale and parsnips and pumpkins. Next year I'm going to try growing hops for beer.

My children hate gardening. I make them pull weeds and cultivate the soil around the plants. Still, they're the only kids I know who take a whole cucumber off the vine and eat it, skin and all, as though it were pure ambrosia. While we work in our garden, I tell my kids stories from my childhood and from my mother's as well. I don't look at the time I spend with my kids in the garden as 'quality time,' but as time we are spending doing something that needs to be done. My children may hate gardening, but they love to look at the neat rows of canned fruits and vegetables I've put up for the winter. They also love going to the store-room to pick a jar of whatever they like for supper.

My children tell me they don't like working in the garden, but they know how much it means to me so they are careful not to push it too far.

They rather sound like a little girl I used to know.

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