Apr

A Garden of Another Kind

Most years, these would just be a couple of big boxes of dirt where a couple of different women are going to plant some stuff. However, this year they mean something special to me. This one is located in a community garden in Utah, where my daughter-in-law, Britni, is learning to garden for the first time in her life.

This one is located at my place in Indiana, where I will be gardening yet again, as I have been since I was Britni’s age. Yes, I know, I need to mow my grass. Deal with it.

She and I both turned the soil in our cross-country gardens today, and chatted with each other online and shared pictures afterwards. We are going to be sore together as we flex muscles we haven’t used much over the winter. Britni has been asking me gardening questions over the last couple of months, and we’ve had conversations about what we were looking at in our seed catalogs, and how to prep soil. We’ve talked about worms, compost, and how to support tomatoes in small spaces. Neither of my boys showed any interest in my passion for growing things, and I’ve always been OK with that. However, it wasn’t until Britni sent me the picture of her efforts today that I realized how much I’ve always wanted to be able to share and pass on what I’ve learned over the years. So, as Britni plants her first seeds this spring, I think of what Gertrude Jekyll said, “The love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies, but grows to the enduring happiness that the love of gardening gives.”