Too Old to Garden?



                                        

A few weeks ago when my friend Leslie and I were discussing the incredible amount of work our gardens had required this past summer, she suggested I read “Gardening for a Lifetime,” a book on “How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older.”  The author, Sydney Eddison,  a lady I suspect is only a few years older than I am,  has enjoyed a life very similar to mine.  She has designed and created her own gardens,  gives lectures, writes books, and even became a widow in 2005, the same year I did. 

I was eager to learn about Mrs. Eddison’s ideas on how to cope when one no longer has the physical stamina to maintain a large garden.  I wasn’t surprised to find that hiring a variety of helpers was her first solution.  My kids have been telling me to do just that for the past five years. 

I  have a wonderful yard man who comes for an hour or so each week to do the “man jobs” I can’t do. He mows the steep banks around the pond, moves rocks too heavy for me to move, fixes machines that don’t work.   But I want to do all those other garden jobs. 

Unfortunately I’m in the same predicament as Mrs. Eddison, getting too cripped up to continue maintaining a landscape that I’ve spent more than 50 years creating. But I’ve gardened all these years for very different reasons than this erudite lady has.

I acquired all my garden knowledge through gardening, learning from my many mistakes.  I had no background or education in gardening, never took courses in horticulture, never went to nurseries to find new and different plants. I’ve never even bothered to learn the Latin names of the perennials in my gardens. As a result I am always uncomfortable talking to educated gardeners.

When I began to write gardening columns for the local newspapers it was only because I couldn’t find a publisher for the 3 “Great American Novels” I’d written. It always makes sense to write about what you’re familiar with, and by then I had a bushel basket of gardening experiences and was even giving my wildflower programs to garden clubs.   

When my readers ask gardening questions, I look up the answers in books if I’ve never dealt personally with the problems they encounter.   “I’m not a horticulturist, just an entertainer” has been my stock apology.   It still is. My first love is writing. And there’s the vast difference between this very knowledgeable gardener and myself. 

I have delighted in the challenge of turning an abandoned farm into a beautiful property.  I revel in caring for this landscape Hank and I created, getting my hands in the dirt, nestling little seedlings in their new home, pulling up all those ferocious weeds.  I love it when my grandchildren want to get out the photo albums and look back at the early years when Locust Hill didn’t even have a lawn, just burdocks and poison ivy and falling down fences.

My head is full of wonderful memories of how we struggling to tame this muddled tangle of vegetation, building retaining walls, fencing the sheep pastures, starting my first vegetable garden.  One of my oldest memories from Locust Hill occurred way back in 1965 when my new friend Bunny Foster brought me a dozen iris rhizomes. I didn’t even know what they were. 

Where to put them?  Those plants were the beginning of my perennial border, a flower bed that grew like Topsy.  My friend Janette brought me feverfew, Betsy gave me Monarda, Henny divided and gave me peony roots, my mother offered me lemon lilies. Eventually the border extended the entire length of sheep pasture fence, over 100 feet.

I love remembering the morning I went out to the compost pile with the morning’s coffee grounds and saw that one of our ewes had produced three lambs.  What a sight! 

Or the day I was lucky enough to have my camera when a total of 8 pintails splashed down into the pond, ducking and diving for twenty minutes before flapping back up into the blue sky.

What fun to recall the excitement as we prepared for the first wedding on Locust Hill; how I scalloped the perennial border’s boring straight edge and bought lupines and peonies and annuals so we’d have blooms in June; how our naughtiest dog, Rosta, stepped on Trum’s train as she and her Dad walked across the lawn toward the waiting groom.

 Oh, dear, I could easily spend another hour or two reminiscing about Locust Hill! 

Mrs. Eddison had many other good suggestions in her book besides hiring help, but I will save them (and I suspect a few more memories) for my next column.

Anatomy of a Carrot?



                                   
Snow in October, and no killing frost has got to be a record.  I didn’t wait for Jack to blacken my vegetable garden.  I pulled up the pepper plants, the tomato vines and my pathetic Brussels sprouts.  Everyone I’ve talked to who grew sprouts had the same problem I did - sprouts no bigger than peas.

The one vegetable I left in the garden was the carrots.  If you  mulch the carrot row heavily you can continue harvesting them well into December.  Wouldn’t it be nice if carrots made your hair curl and your eyes capable of seeing in the dark?  Unfortunately the vitamin A purported to bring about these delightful attributes is apparently not released unless carrots are cooked or juiced. I’m a rabbit food freak and eat few cooked carrots, and No juice. 

Last week a friend sent me an article claiming a sliced carrot looks like the human eye. “The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye... And science now shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to the function of the eyes.”

Since there was no one listed as the author of the article, I went on the Internet to see how authentic it might be.  When I googled “Food-Body Parts” I was directed to a site called “Truth or Fiction.”  The site said the article was “a very creative piece, but is very weak on substantiation.  We have not found any strong documentation correlating foods with the parts of the body that they resemble.”

OK, maybe it’s just a joke, but I found it really interesting and thought you might too, so here it is.

It's been said that God first separated the salt water from the fresh, made dry land, planted a garden, made animals and fish... All before making a human. He made and provided what we'd need before we were born. These are best & more powerful when eaten raw.

God left us a great clue as to what foods help what part of our body!
God's Pharmacy! Amazing!

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye... And YES, science now shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.

A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart has four chambers and is red. All of the research shows tomatoes are loaded with lycopine and are indeed pure heart and blood food.  Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.

A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds on the nut are just like the neo-cortex. We now know walnuts help develop more than three (3) dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys. Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and many more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don't have enough sodium in your diet, the body pulls it from the bones, thus making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.  

Avocados,  Eggplant and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? It takes exactly nine (9) months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods. Modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them.

Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the mobility of male sperm and increase the numbers of Sperm as well to overcome male sterility. Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics. Oranges, Grapefruits, and other Citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions look like the body's cells. Today's research shows onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells. They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes. A working companion, Garlic, also helps eliminate waste materials and dangerous free radicals from the body.

Sorry, I don't have any photos of vegetable body parts.  True or False, you’ve got to admit the anatomy lesson was fun.