Today is my birthday. I plan to spend the day doing pretty much whatever I want. I think that will be working on the photos to get my garden blog launched and online. So to get me in the mood, and in keeping with my fairly new tradition of asking for what I want, I am asking those of you who stop by to share a garden or nature memory with me. Either from childhood or from now…but I’d love to know what you love about the garden or plants or something that surprised you in a garden once.
Here’s one of mine. I remember very vividly planting nasturtiums in an egg carton in a class at school I don’t know what grade, maybe 1st or 2nd. And I remember bringing them home and my grandmother really not wanting them in her garden for some reason or another. Still she gave me a little patch of dirt and I tore apart those egg carton sections and planted those little seedlings in the ground. Year after year when they continued to spread and bloom I would get happy just looking at their smiling faces.
And even though nasturtiums aren’t a California native plant, I am tempting to plant a pot of them just for old time’s sake.
Thanks in advance for helping my memory garden grow.
I don’t have garden memories from my childhood, on account of my mother having a black thumb and our house being on the side of a hill. But I remember how proud I was the first year my veggie garden actually produced something that we could eat. The way that first tomato off the vine tasted like salty sunshine bursting in my mouth when I bit into it. Finding that zucchini that eluded detection until it was the size of a Louisville slugger. Realizing that fresh eggplant tastes like a pale apple if you eat it right away. Yum, now I’m hungry.
I love this memory even though the thought of eating those veggies leaves me, well, not happy. 🙂
Happy Birthday- I didn’t forget all the way from Aus- Luckily you are not relying on birthday flowers from my garden because absolutely nothing grows except for the weeds and a few bottle brush which are native of course but fairly boring unless they are out in full bloom.
So anyway have a nice day and all I can send you is my good wishes xxx
– Anne McKenna
Thanks for the good wishes, Anne. I didn’t know that bottle brush was native to you.
Google said it was Ernest’s BDay and…
…I said I know who else!
It’s the only drawing I’ve done (so far) of Ernie….
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Susan!
Re: Google said it was Ernest’s BDay and…
Nice! Did you know that Hemingway’s cats in Key West all have six toes?
Did you know that Hemingway’s cats in Key West all have six toes?
They probably told us that when we took the tour (when this vacation diary image was rendered) but I had forgotten that. I did remember as illustrated here that they were all the off spring in some way or another of Ernie’s cat Snowball.
Re: Google said it was Ernest’s BDay and…
Thanks for the birthday wishes, Slatts. You know how close I am to Ernie. 🙂
happy birthday!
Growing up, my next door neighbor was a landscape architect who created outdoor spaces with ground covers and shrubs, not flowers– for our house he designed a blue slate patio in front, surrounded by dogwoods, and a low wooden bench that my dad built.
Every summer my mother planted a big planter full of petunias and geraniums and our “gardening” meant keeping her flowers watered and poking dandelions out of the green grass yard. We also had the job of stomping down anthills that formed in the sand between the slate slabs.
I’m a July birthday too, and birthdays meant all the neighbor kids sitting lined up on the wooden bench on the patio with ice cream cones …
I love that garden birthday memory. Thank you for sharing. Didn’t the ants climb all over you when you stomped on the anthills?
You share a birthday with my eldest (she’s fifteen today, how did that happen?!)!
However, garden memory:
My grandmother loved roses. She loved lots of roses. Most people said her roses were some of the best they’d ever seen, but she never entered any contests, that I can remember.
After she died, when I was seven, I remember spending summers with my grandfather. He used to get up early in the morning, and go out and start chores. If he had help (usually my brothers) then he went fishing. Anything he caught, whether we could eat it or not, he brought back. We’d spend part of the afternoon digging careful holes around the bases of all the roses. We had to be sure not to dig in the same spot two times in a row.
And then, we’d put the fish remains into the holes. My grandfather said that just like the memory of my grandmother, we had to feed the roses to keep them alive, and that she would never, truly, be gone as long as we remembered.
I so love the image of you burying fish parts with your grandfather. He was such a special man in your life. Thanks for sharing.
Happy Birthday, Susan! It’s also my mom’s birthday (she’s 85)!
Just so happens she’s the green thumb in the family, and my childhood is full of memories of her tending her orchid plants. She also knew lots of plant species and could identify almost anything wherever she went.
As for me, I posted today my ultimate garden memory: http://jamarattigan.livejournal.com/304604.html.
May your life and writing continue to bloom always. ♥
I think it’s so cool that you posted about Secret Garden on Susan’s birthday, just when she’s contemplating gardens, Jama!
I loved reading your garden memory in your blog.
Thanks for the birthday wishes.
Happy Birthday!!
And I do kind of think you need to plant those nasturtiums! They sound totally happiness-spreading.
I, too, remember first grade, when we brought in broken eggshells and the teacher provided dirt to fill them and seeds. Once beans sprouted, we brought them home. I stuck them beside the house, but was never given instructions, or, more likely, failed to heed them — it was pretty rocky — I doubt I could tell a plant from a weed — and nothing grew. But I can well remember the hope. And going out by the house and staring.
Re: Happy Birthday!!
I think I need to plant them too! As soon as I put the courtyard back together after the roof episode.
Yes, it’s that hope that I remember too! Thank you for the birthday wishes.
Happy Birthday to you!
Thanks, Jenny!
I think I invented baby carrots
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
My garden memory —
One year, when I was 12 I think, I planted my own garden where our above ground pool used to be — I planted everything from seeds — beautiful zinnias, delicious green beans
and very small radishes and carrots . . . . because I didn’t dig up the earth very much — so the poor carrots and radishes had a hard time growing to their full potential.
Re: I think I invented baby carrots
What a fun memory. Thank you for sharing it and thanks for the birthday wishes.
Happy birthday!
One nifty garden surprise I got the year after we moved into our current house was the columbines along the front steps. I’d never seen columbines before! As you can see from my user icon, they were quite pretty.
Haven’t seen them this year, which is a shame, but they were beautiful while they lasted.
Oh I love columbines! I had bought some of my native ones to plant in the backyard where I had the perfect spot only I had forgotten they were poisonous so I couldn’t plant them where Cassie might eat them. I planted them in the front and they promptly died. sigh.
Thank you for sharing.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!
My fondest garden memories are picking veggies with my dad when I was little. He was an amazing gardener.
🙂
xoxo!
Aw, daddy memories are the best! Thank you for sharing it and thanks for the birthday wishes.
The memory that springs to mind is my first medicinal garden. We made a trip to a local nursery and bought everything that even remotely pertained, including catnip. After we planted those, we still had space, so we back and bought cooking herbs.
My cat at that time (a feral stray who became my best bud,) LOVED my garden and would spend his days rolling on the catnip and brushing up against lemon balm, thyme, dill, rosemary, oregano…then he would come sleep with me at night. I still remember how totally wonderful he smelled.
What an absolutely perfect memory of your cat. I love it! Thank you for sharing it and thanks for the birthday wishes.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
I love to garden, too.
My mother was never a gardener, but she always planted gladiolus. I loved them as a child and whenever I see them, they remind me of childhood.
My first husband’s mother was very stiff and stuffy and I never connected with her. I have no idea how the subject of gladiolus came up, but one time she said she didn’t like them because they are so “funereal.”
I hate that word to describe them.
And I hated that she said that.
Now, when I see gladiolus, I think of my mother and I think of the word “funereal.”
Oh boy, I hate that you have that gladiolus memory. Ick.
Oh, wait, I forgot another important garden memory: my grandfather had a HUGE vegetable garden and grew peanuts. My grandmother always kept a pot of peanuts boiling on the back of the stove. (A Southern speciality: boiled peanuts)
I like this memory a lot better. LOL. Does it take a lot of room to grow peanuts? Thanks for sharing these.
SOCIAL NETWORKING CLASSES
Happy Birthday! Are you scheduling any more social networking classes.
Re: SOCIAL NETWORKING CLASSES
Watch the classes page on my website for more info:
http://www.backup.susantaylorbrown.com/classes.html
Happy birthday, Susan!
In honour of your birthday, I’ll talk about the first time I knew I loved tulips. M and I were driving on a highway north of Amsterdam in May 1985. On the west side of the road we saw acres of red and yellow tulips. We pulled over to the shoulder and stopped.
When we finally had a house and a garden of our own, I suggested we plant lots of tulips.
Re: Happy birthday, Susan!
I’m so glad you got the tulips you wanted! Thanks for sharing your memory and thanks for the birthday wishes.
Happy birthday!
I remember picking blackberries with my grandma under a hot, Kansas sun.
I can picture this memory. Thanks for sharing! And thanks for the birthday wishes.
Happy Birthday, Susan–and what better way to celebrate than with a Garden Party!
Some of my fondest memories are of flower gardens. Not utilitarian vegetable plots, which, of course, are valuable in that they produce gratifying results (i.e., consumables) for one’s labors. No, I’m thinking about those spaces set aside for beauty’s sake and nothing else. I considered myself wealthy when I’ve got a flower garden of my own.
Thanks for the birthday wishes, Melodye. I know we share a like mind that everyone should have a place for beauty’s sake.
A very happy birthday wish to you.
My memory of growing gardens is having one stalk of corn growing up in the middle of all the short colorful flowers. Mom knew it wasn’t a weed so we let it grow to about four feet tall. I don’t think we ever had any corn on it, but we kept wishing.
Thanks for the birthday wishes, Diane. I love that image of one stalk of corn in the middle of all the flowers. Thanks for sharing it with me.
not so random commenter
Happy Birthday!! I hope it is a good one!
Re: not so random commenter
Thank you. It was.
Happy B-Day! Mine’s on Saturday. I love having a birthday in the summer! Have a great upcoming year.
Thanks, Barb. I like a summer birthday now that I’m grown but as a kid I wished I had one during the school year.
Okay, I know. You think you’re getting a horrible, I-hate-weeding story from me, but don’t panic. It’s not that bad. Here we go.
When I was 9 or 10 or so, I loved reading biographies. Not sure why–something about an easy way to step into a world I might never have another chance at? I read about people who seemed to have nothing in common with who I was or would be (altho now I think about that, I’m going…Duh! They did!). Anyway, I often ended up play-acting things. Like when I read about Thomas Edison, I got binder paper & tape and “built” a record player. (As I remember, it really did hold its shape, although I could never get music to come out of it!)
Anyway…onto the gardening. I also read a biography of Luther Burbank. I don’t know if we’d yet been to his house in Santa Rosa, or if that came later. But I just loved that scene of him walking around his orchard, sort of talking to and touching each plant. And I was fascinated, apparently, by the whole grafting thing. Not sure if the author didn’t really make clear what was going on, if I didn’t understand it, or if the details didn’t matter, but after reading the book, I went out into the back yard and walked slowly, dreamily through the fruit trees, tying long pieces of grass onto the branches. And it felt great.
For you, Susan. 🙂 Happy Birthday!
Okay, this memory gave me chills. It was the perfect one to share with me. Thank you so much! It’s so much like something plant kid would do.
Okay, weird. But cool! 🙂
Garden Memories
Garden Memories
While growing up as a girl in Wisconsin, one of my early morning chores was to pick the green beans, lettuce and carrots from the garden. Although I didn’t like this chore because of the humidity and Wisconsin’s state bird . . . the mosquito . . . I do have some happy memories from it.
I recall the wonderful way the dirt smelled, along with the greenery, and the sounds of the birds and those blasted insects, before the day got started. The way my feet squished into the damp dirt. And especially how I felt carrying the fresh vegetables into the kitchen, where Mom washed everything and set them on the kitchen table.
Throughout the day, my friends and I would get to snack on these treats. There was nothing in the world better than those sweet carrots were. And Mom could never understand how I liked uncooked green beans. But I did. Crunchy and just the right balance for the sweetness of the carrots.
I would give anything to have my mother stand before me and offer me some freshly washed vegetables from our garden.
Liz
Re: Garden Memories
Liz I just love this memory of you and your mother and your friends. Thank you for sharing it.
Happy birthday to you, dear friend!
My garden memory is fairly recent – Clifton Park, NY, after more than a few years living outside of CA and dealing with long winters and late springs, I finally finally understood the true joy of seeing tulips sprout up and bloom. I never really appreciated spring since it’s perpetually “growing season” in CA (at least in LA where I grew up). Waiting for winter to end and spring to arrive was pure torture for me in NY. I’ll never forget that feeling of joy, mixed with relief, as tulips in my garden finally bloomed.
Today, tulips are one of my favorite flowers.
Gardens must be so very different back east!
Thanks for sharing your tulip memory with me and for the birthday wishes. I can’t wait to have time to spend with you again.
A garden memory?
Well when I was young, my best friend and I decided to enter her mother’s Garden Club competition. So we planted bird seed and grew grass. She took first place and I took second place — out of two entries. A special moment (g).
Oh Linda Joy, this is too cute! Thanks for sharing it.
Happy Birthday
Susan, happy birthday. I love your idea, too.
On Sunday my son and I were out digging in the yard. We live in an old house, and are always finding stuff buried in the dirt. It’s often only old nails but occasionally things like old medicine bottles. So every so often we set up a little archaeological dig. We keep hoping for some real treasure, like arrowheads or, well, gold.
Anyway, the 2 chickens saw what we were doing, and came over and lay in the dirt we’d dug up and had a dust-bath fiesta. They LOVE dust baths. So there the four of us were: 2 of us happily spading away and the other 2 by our sides. One hen was so comfortable she fell asleep.
Many happy returns of the day.
Susan
Chicken Spaghetti
Re: Happy Birthday
Oh Susan what an absolutely terrific memory. I can picture the whole scene. Thank you for sharing it with me on my birthday.
a place for fantasy play
My earliest memories of the garden are digging tunnels through the field of wild mustard that grew in our orchard. The mustard plants were probably 3 feet high, but we could dig tunnels through the undergrowth – with the yellow flowers waving above us. It was a wonderful feeling, completely hidden from the adult world, making tunnels through this orchard. still makes me smile. Have a wonderful birthday!
Re: a place for fantasy play
Love this image of tunnels through the mustard. What a a great place to play make believe.
Beautiful idea, Susan.
I remember once, when I was seven or eight, I stopped by the house on the corner to smell a rose. It was late fall, long past the time when all other roses had faded away. And as I stood there, smelling it, an old, old lady came down to the edge of the lawn where I was. She didn’t yell at me, or tell me to stop bothering her plants. She said, “Do you like that rose?” And when I nodded, she said, “I think it ought to be yours.” And she took out her shears, clipped the rose, and handed it to me. I carried it home with both hands, gentle as could be, fragile and pink in my hands.
Happy birthday, Susan!
Thank you for sharing this lovely memory with me. What a generous gift into the hands of a child who so obviously appreciated it.
Happy Birthday Susan!
Thank you!
Huge vegetable gardens were a staple of my childhood. We children liked to complain that we had to plant limas, pick them, shell them and then the final insult – eat them! Eventually though, I learned to love lima beans.
Corn-on-the-cob, tomatoes for sandwiches, fried okra – nothing could be finer!!
My favorite part of gardening even today seems to be digging in the dirt – mulching and adding amendments to create good healthy soil. There is something about the smell of it and those early memories of being in the garden after supper with my whole family.
Gardening nurtures me as it does you. Here’s praying that you, your gardening, and your stories grow abundantly this year. Happy Birthday!
Funny I had forgotten much of my grandmother and vegetables until I started reading all these memories.
I love the smell of the dirt too. I don’t add amendments, my natives love poor soil, but the mulch and the worms turn the soil into something wonderful.
Thanks for sharing and for the birthday wishes.
Happy birthday, Susan!
I remember my grandmother always growing phlox, roses, and petunias. And my father growing tomatoes and green beans, which are a million times better than store-bought.
My favorite garden memory of recent years is my New England aster story, which I blogged about March 10 but applies here too, I think:
Every spring, my husband and I visit native-plant sales in our area and come home with armloads. We aim for diversity and we’ll try almost anything, so we’ve brought home a lot of different plants. Many thrived; most survived; a few just didn’t make it.
We have a spot in our yard that used to be sunny but, thanks to the rapid growth of a young sycamore, is shadier than it used to be. During the sunny time, I planted some New England asters there. At some point, I missed them and decided the area had become too dark for them. I said my private regretful farewell to the asters and then forgot that they’d ever been there.
One day I noticed some very tall plants with pinkish flowers waving in the breeze under the sycamore. “What on earth are those?” I wondered. I couldn’t remember planting any pink flowers there. Upon closer inspection, they proved to be aster flowers on top of what had become very long stalks, stalks that stretched up to reach the sun. They had battled through the dark times and come back!
I tell this story because the asters remind me of the half-finished manuscripts, rough drafts, notes, and other incomplete projects sitting around in notebooks and in my computer. Some of those projects sit in suspended animation for months or years while I work on other things. I hesitate to call any of them abandoned, because I never know when I might come up with the perfect ending/beginning/theme/polishing/whatever they need to finish them. When I’m stuck with one project–when I just don’t see how to fix it–I assign it to the subconscious and move on. And at some point, waving under my nose, the aster flower will reappear.
I hadn’t heard your aster story before so I’m very glad you shared it with me. Thank you. I didn’t realize you did natives too!
Garden memories
Happy birthday to you!
So many happy garden memories. I first met my grandfather when I was 9 and shy. We’d ride our bikes over to his vegetable allotment and we made friends while working there every afternoon. Peas and beans, potatoes and tomatoes, birds and worms. The magic of yummy red glowing raspberries hanging below the prickly leaves, a moist bright green tunnel, a world apart. Then break time in the potting shed. We sat on upturned buckets looking out the door, and drank tea from a flask and ate cold buttered scones. I can still smell the bonemeal in that little shed and see the white lime. How I loved my grandfather!
Re: Garden memories
thanks for helping me celebrate my birthday with garden memories. What a beautiful picture I now have in my mind of you and your grandfather in that little shed.
Happy birthday, Susan!
Here’s another tulip story: I grew up in Southern California (not tulip land, mind you), but where my grandparents grew oranges and avocados at their home in Whittier. I’d help Grandpa pick oranges for our morning juice when I spent the weekend with them. At my home in 1960’s Newport Beach, food came out of a can or a frozen pouch – it was the space age, after all!
When we moved to Connecticut at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school (bad idea all around), Mom and I decided we should plant tulips to bloom in the spring. (Meanwhile, Grandma sent us boxes of avocados – bless her.) We bought bulbs, but when we went to plant them, we weren’t sure if there was an UP direction or not. Oh, well – Mom and I stuck ’em the ground at the edge of our backyard forest, half one way, half the other.
Six months later we figured out there had been a right way to plant those bulbs, because only half of them came up.
I wish you many happy returns of the day and many properly blooming flowers and books.
thanks, Debbie, for the birthday wishes and the tulip story. I’ve never planted bulbs before…you’d think they’d be smart enough to find their way to the top but obviously not. LOL
Happy Birthday, Susan! I have very fond memories of following my mom around in that lovely hour right before sunset when shadows are long and the grass is cool. She’d carry buckets of water to her flowers all around the house, and I’d tell her about my band practice and friends. My mom is a champion gardener!
what a lovely garden memory. Thanks so much for sharing it with me on my birthday.
I just remember as a kid sneaking into the Italian neighbor’s garden at night to eat her tomatoes. The idea of someone sneaking over (at night, no less) and eating MY garden totally freaks me out.
I was a weird kid.
And Happy Birthday again, girlfriend!
Too too funny. I can just picture what kind of kid you were to sneak tomatoes! LOL
Thanks again for the birthday wishes.
Happy Birthday, Susan!
I don’t have a garden memory off hand (though my mom was a wonderful gardener) but every year I’m so happy to see and smell my sweet little pink roses when they bloom.
Oh yeah, a memory popped up of my dad mowing around the tall wild daisies that found their way into our back yard. 🙂
Hope your day is filled with flowers and sunshine.
thanks for the memory (I knew you’d find one) and the birthday wishes.
Happy Birthday, Susan. Two rainy days in a row here in NY. Hope your day is sunny and delightful.
~Della
Thank you, Della. Ugh on the rain. We’ve had nothing but clear, blue and hot skies here in CA.
Happy Birthday Susan!
Happy Birthday Susan!
I’d like to share in the garden memories,
but alas,
not today…
The weather here is cool,
very damp…
and my brain has gotten quite a cramp!
I hope you have a wonderful Birthday!
– Fred Higgins
Re: Happy Birthday Susan!
Aw Fred, thanks for stopping by. I hadn’t heard from you in a while and wondered about you. Thanks for the smile.
Happy Birthday!
My mom is a wonderful gardener, and when I was small, I loved to take my little toys out into her gardens and play with them among her plants. Her garden became a forest and a jungle and whatever wild place I wanted it to be.
I loved to do that too, Cindy. I collected miniature animals as a child and loved to make a place for them in the forest of the plants. Thank you for sharing your memory with me.
Ack! I’m late to the party! Happy birthday, Susan!!!
Thanks for the kind wishes.
Oh, I’m LATE!!!
Happy belated birthday, Susan!
This year the ground around our live oak tree out front just started spouting squash vines like confetti. Out of nowhere. It was crazy. Until we realized they were pumpkin vines. And we sit right next to that tree when we carve our jack-o-lanterns every October. Surprise!
Now, go plant your nasturiums!
Thanks for the birthday wishes. What a great garden story. Of course you need to use that in a book or a poem!