I’m not sure just how my mother found the time and energy to establish her fairy-tale flower gardens along with all the gardening, picking, canning and freezing that she tackled each summer as a result of Dad’s ambition to raise most of the food our family ate.
I suppose it was a result of the fact that she grew up the second oldest of a family of six children and was assigned chores at a young age. In those days, just about everybody was at least part farmer. People raised gardens, kept chickens and milk cows, even those who lived in towns, and housework was hard work without today’s dishwashers, clothes dryers, vacuum cleaners and myriad electric kitchen appliances. Firewood had to be carried into the house, even in summer for cooking. Water was brought from the well in a large bucket with a handy dipper for a quick drink, and in more copious amounts for bathing, laundry, cooking and cleaning.
Born in 1904, Mother was a teenager during the Roaring Twenties and eager to embrace the modern world that was so rapidly changing. Fortunately, she married my dad, a man who was fascinated by machines and gadgets and enthusiastic about new ideas. Over the years, he provided her with every new household gadget he could afford, and if he couldn’t afford it, he was clever enough to provide a homemade version of any labor-saving device she wanted. So, when she expressed a desire for a pool of water in her flower garden, he produced one for her.
The first one was a simple trickle from the garden hose, flowing over a stair-step of stones into a small stone-lined pool. A weeping willow tree draped gracefully over one edge, shading petunias and snapdragons from the hottest sun of the afternoon. She wished for goldfish and waterlilies, but the pool was too shallow to support them. When we moved to another house with a larger back yard, Dad built a cement-lined pool that was deep enough for the goldfish but lacked shade and a dirt bottom; no attempt was made to establish water plants. Dad made a birdbath from concrete, molding the basin in a large garbage-can lid and studding it with seashells. Water was piped underground and up through the stem of the birdbath, complete with a sprinkler head for a picturesque spray of water that fell gently onto the ferns, pansies and violets Mother planted around the base.
A board fence separated the back yard from the more public part of the lawn facing the street, and Mother planted zinnias, gladiolas, marigolds, snapdragons and other sun-loving flowers in a riot of colors all along both sides of the fence. The bright, fragrant flowers attracted hummingbirds, butterflies, honeybees and bumblebees. As children, my sisters and I spent many summer hours watering the flowers with pop bottles we filled from the fishpond, then daring each other to lure the plump bumblebees into the empty bottles. I don’t remember any of us ever being stung while doing that, but I do remember stepping on a bumblebee nest while running across a neighbor’s yard. I concluded that the neighbors must have “bad” bumblebees, as ours were gentle and would never be that vicious.
When we moved to the acreage with its extensive lawn, there was ample room for a BIG fountain and birdbath; one with winding little streams that spilled into a number of shallow pools snaking across the yard. The central fountain trickled down over a mound constructed of a variety of shapes and sizes of rocks and into an encircling pool before starting its journey past plantings of nearly every flower in the seed catalog that was known to thrive in our part of the state.
There were roses and iris, star-shaped lilies, green Bells of Ireland, ferns and cactus, rubber plants, snake plants, daffodils, violets, bleeding-heart shrubs, Sweet Williams, bluebells, Lily-of-the-valley and many other plants transplanted from the woodlands and generous neighbors’ gardens. And, still, along the driveway was the long row of iris Mother had cultivated for years, two fragrant old-fashioned lilac bushes, and the delicate silver-lace vine that festooned the clothesline pole and crept along the clothesline wires.