by Lauren Haslett

Created on: March 03, 2010   Last Updated: March 10, 2010

Big White Bucket

I don’t even remember the first time I was in a garden. But I was a “Granny’s girl,” and I remember Granny's garden vividly. As essential and ubiquitous as the clean country air, it helped me to grow healthier and freer, just like the tomatoes, corn, beans, melons, strawberries that ran wild around the most removed piece of my grandparents’ land. Gardens were necessities in my childhood, in the lives of my mother and grandmother, and they invaded all our lives in many ways, like the notorious kudzu that was constantly complained of, conquering every other plant in the state of Tennessee.

My grandparents’ garden was an almost sacred space. Indoors, adults could cuss like sailors, coat the walls and every other available surface with thick, delicious grease and smoke like billowing, profane chimneys. But outside, the air was clear and full of light, and I could smell nothing but loamy earth and green leaves and bright black-and-yellow caterpillars full of hints, allusions and puffed-up notions of their own self-importance.

“Damn June bugs,” Granny would mutter, swatting as she went, skinny arms and tanned skin waggling at the big, shiny insects.

My favorite part of the garden was the small stretch of green beans, standing tall on their wooden stands like proud, waxy mannequins in the sun.  “Watch your feet, little girl!” my granny reminded me, as I let my nice little girl shoes (or better yet, my bare feet) sink continually down into the soft, only half-dried mud between the beans and the summer squash.

“How do we know when it’s the right time to pick?” I’d ask. Like many questions I asked my grandmother, it was one I could never get a straightforward answer to. There were always exceptions, ifs buts ors maybes, pinches handfuls guesses estimations. Always these extra words standing between me and full understanding.

But Granny didn’t need to understand anything. She was at home in the dirt, in the greenness and sticky summer air, and she just knew. Gardening was instinctive to her.

“Hold this bucket here, little girl. Hold it steady now, don’t set it in the mud there.” The white plastic bucket, the same bucket that had been taken on this convivial walk to the garden for years years years, was almost as big as I was at six years old, and when full of bright, pregnant tomatoes and squashes longer than my arm and corn bright as the sun, it was damn heavy, too.

“I can’t hooold it Granny, it’s too heeaavy.” Trying, in my tiny voice, to imitate my granny’s Southern accent. Sometimes, when I thought the grownups weren’t really paying attention to me, I’d even try to throw in a swear word (always in a slightly softer, timid little-girl voice). I was a good girl, after all; I wanted her approval.

“C’moan, little girl. Back up to the house now.” When my little sister was there, too (as she usually was, white-blond hair flying behind like a storm), it was a scramble, big white bucket banging against my continually bruised knees. Always a race between us, so close in so many ways.

But, every once in awhile, it was a quieter trip.

“You did good, baby girl. Gimme that there bucket.” An errant June bug smacked loudly against the plastic pail in my arms, trying to burrow itself into the squishy soft tomatoes hiding inside, perhaps.

“You’re a Granny’s girl, ain’t you?” I blazed bright with sunshine and pride, just like the caterpillars.

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