Comments on: Gardening Lessons My Grandmother Taught Me (Unintentionally)

By: Jaz

Jaz — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:29:47 +0000

This is such a beautiful story. Though there was a slight disconnect between you and your grandmother it is still enocuraging to know that in retrospect you learned something from her. The idea of ‘grandmothering’ is often depicted as a woman who dotes of her grandchildren. However, it is often the stand-offish grandmothers who have the most impact on a child’s life because they are full a wisdom. Granted, having the doting grandmother is great, and having a doting grandmother that is wise is even better, but that is not always the case for some. This article represents how a person can extract the wisdom and knowledge from their sometimes uneffectionate grandmothers (grandparents).

By: Melissa

Melissa — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:18:38 +0000

We were just having this conversation with my mother; that we wish there would’ve been more moments of dialogue about life with our elders. But there is this barrier, meant to create respect, I don’t know; or just the mentality that kids are not to be included in adult conversations. This has definitely spurred more conversations with my mother. What I also find interesting is how we are returning to things such as gardening (due to necessity), vegetarianism (due to lack of resources) and a multitude of other things that immigrants coming to both the US and Canada were (unintentionally or intentionally) forced to leave behind in their own countries. I hope that we’ve moved passed this dated mentality. Anyways, that is my humble little comment

By: Van

Van — Tue, 26 May 2009 02:35:12 +0000

I’m glad your sharing this kind of personal history with your readers.

I’m currently exploring my grandmother’s gardens on my blog as well. I have to piece my mexican grandmother’s garden together through sepia-tinged photos, I never met her. But i’m glad my mother learned her thrifty gardening ways and passed the knowledge down to me.

By: Van

Van — Tue, 26 May 2009 02:35:11 +0000

I’m glad your sharing this kind of personal history with your readers.

By: CallieK

CallieK — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:19:06 +0000

Like Javachik I got my gardening lessons more directly, albeit grudgingly. I grew up the eldest of 13 kids and although we weren’t poor, my parents worked hard to stretch the budget. My childhood summers were full of days spent at the large garden plot my father rented from a farm just outside of town where we grew everything we could possibly grow. Lugging water from the well, weeding, and harvesting the results were part of all of my summers and I hated it. We were also drafted into strawberry picking for weeks every June. And it didn’t end there- we kids were in-house labour for the preserving phases as well! Hours of peeling piles of tomatoes for freezing and canning. Strawberries,plums and peaches were cut for freezing in sugar syrup. My most vivid memories of summer are sitting around the kitchen table with a paring knife and pruned hands, juices of something sticky dripping off my elbows. Then came pickling season- bushels of cukes would get soaked in the sinks and be ground into relishes, sliced into pickles or bottled whole with dill. We were a giant production line and I couldn’t WAIT to get away from it all!

Now as an adult I completely appreciate all that I learned- I grow many veggies every year and am proud to say that my preserving skills are still intact. Using my father’s recipes, I make batches of dill pickles that my friends beg for every year. I’ve adapted many of his other recipes and we trade now- I even taught him to make tomato salsa (which is a huge improvement over his attempts at homemade ketchup- the one thing we as kids never did learn to like.)

By: Tatyana

Tatyana — Sun, 24 May 2009 03:20:50 +0000

Wonderful.

By: Carolyn Blakeney

Carolyn Blakeney — Sun, 24 May 2009 02:04:14 +0000

It is so blessed to find out that every being can teach. We may not like the lesson, or we may find it transcendent, but the fact remains that everybody has something to teach.

Maybe we should all go work on our own lessons…

By: Tanis

Tanis — Sat, 23 May 2009 18:46:18 +0000

Wonderfully written! It’s amazing how much we pick-up “unintentionally” as children and use as adults.

By: JavaChick

JavaChick — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:37:34 +0000

Interesting. I had the ‘warm and fuzzy’ type grandmother, as another commenter put it. My sister and I grew up with her right next door and she spent a lot of time with us. She had been a school teacher (the one room school house type) and I have many fond memories of sitting at her kitchen table drawing, painting, cutting & pasting, etc.

I know that she used to garden and I think that she enjoyed it, but I don’t remember ever spending time with her in the garden.

I grew up in the country. Both my parents and grandparents grew vegetable gardens and preserved for the winter. As a child, one of my chores in the summer was often weeding a row in the garden. I hated it! How tedious! Crouching down in the dirt, under the hot sun, pulling (often prickly) weeds. I never, ever, expected to be a gardener.

Then I grew up, moved to the city for work. Missed the country, the wide open spaces, and – oddly enough – the gardens.

I don’t specifically remember any gardening knowledge being passed on. If it was, I think it more likely came from my father. My mother tends the flower gardens, and works in the vegetable garden as well. But I think she sees the vegetable garden as a food source, where my Dad also sees it as something fun and interesting. He likes to try planting new and different things. I’m thinking is something he shared with his mother (the grandmother who lived next door). If there is a gardening gene, it was passed down from my grandmother to both of us.

By: mare

mare — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:17:52 +0000

I loved reading this article. Thanks for sharing this and for all you do.