A Garden Grown with Care

The Gardener and her Garden

Picnic Table Garden Layout

Topsey Turvey Tomatoes

Garlic

Onions

Squash

My Garden on the PicnicTable

The Bishop ask that all of us plant a garden of some kind, so I did. all on an old picnic table, right out on my patio! Now it began with 4 tomatoes and 4 pepper plants. Well, it kind of grew as the days went on. I now have 7 tomatoes and 4 peppers and 3 little pots of cucumbers and one squash, and 3 pans of beans and a container of garlic and one of green onions! Now whether or not they will produce is left to be seen, but I have 4 small tomatoes and 2 tiny peppers already!

My Mississippi roots are deep in the soil! I loved growing up in the country and watching my granddaddy grow his garden and work on his farm. I loved being able to see calves born, and chickens hatched and oh what fun it was to find a fresh bunch of little biddies and to watch as the mother hen gathered them under her wings just as I read in the scriptures about the Savior gathering Isreal under his wings! I saw first hand what it was to work" by the sweat of your brow". and in doing so I learned the importance and the joy that comes from a job well done!

I followed Daddy Kees all over his farm. I watched him sharpen plows in his blacksmith shop and helped him haul hay and even picked a little cotton(remember the story of the shoes and how I had to pick cotton to buy them) I went with him when he took his cotton to the gin, I was there at the grist mill when they ground his corn into cornmeal! I can remember going to the cane mill and watching them make syrup out of sugar cane! What fun i had.

When the vegetables were ready to can, Daddy and Mama Kees worked together, and we had "canning days" and as they worked they told wonderful stories of their childhood and of their children's! I loved to count the jars of beans or tomatoes, or corn! They kept a log of how many they had, and i finally figured out that they would can all they needed and then share with the neighbors! We picked blackberries and made jam and plums and made jelly! Always using the wonderful gifts that Heavenly Father had placed on the farm(blackberry bushes, figs, plums, and pear trees) to make food and store it for the winter! Each week in the summer brought a different fruit or vegetable and they were ready and prepared to work until all was harvested.
What a wonderful education I received on that farm and how simple it was but yet all that was needed was there!

I could never understand why my cousins were so excited to come and visit and see the animals and the garden and drink all the milk they wanted! They would um and aw as Mama Kees fried chicken and had homeade bisquits and cornbread and corn on the cob and butterbeans and I thought, what is wrong with them? You know it was not until years later that I knew what a wonderful life I had as a child! And I am so grateful to be able to share it, for as I look at my little picnic table full of plants my mind wanders back to Fair Oak springs and Daddy and Mama Kees and the "salt of the earth' people that they were!

Thank You for all the wonderful phone calls and cards for Mother's Day it was wonderful to talk to you. There is nothing a grandmother or mother likes better than to hear from her family! Thank you for remembering! As I sat in Church Sunday with my beautiful white rose corsage,(thank you jean and jeff) I thought of this custom we have in the south of honoring our mothers by wearing white if they have passed on or red if they are still here on this earth, and I thought how much I love that custom, for as a child I did so, we could not afford florist flowers, so we found one in the yard,(usually a red rose!) And sometimes as my grandfather would pin it on me, he would tell how grateful he was that his mom was still alive(she was 94 when she died)and how thankful he was for her and her courage to go forth and raise her family of 10 when his father had died in a swimming accident when he was only 10. It made him proud to wear a little rose in his lapel to honor his Mom! Just a simple thing, but so much meaning behind it. today that custom is almost gone, and it makes me sad for I love it; as I wore the rose, my memory of my mother was with me throughout the day and I felt close to her and it helped me think of all the courage it took her to rear me as a single parent, and of her mother, Mama Kees as she stood in the fields by Daddy Kees and helped work the farm to rear their children and their mothers and of Nina and all the women in my life that have helped me know and understand what it is to be a mother by their great example!

This week I want to say Happy Birthday to Laurel and Patti! What a special day May 12th is to have 2 birthdays! Hope you had fun at the beach Patti and I hope Charleston was wonderful for you Laurel! May you both have a wonderful year and have lots of love and joy throughout the year!

And I want to tell Katie that we miss her and love her and will be glad when she gets her feet back on this good ole USA soil!!

And to my 3 daughters, I am grateful to you for being wonderful mothers in Zion! thank you for being such a great example to yuor children so that they understood what being a Mom is-for they are and will be great mothers, how blest I am to have all of you! I love you!

I REMEMBER MAMA

What a wonderful time of year, Mother's day! And no matter who you are or where you are you always remember your own mother at mother's day. And what wonderful memories that I have! My mother, Nell, LaNelle, Grandma Nell or Mama was a wonderful lady! She loved life and loved living life! She was a "fun" Mama and a "fun Grandma"! She never met a stranger and had a heart of gold. She went thru life loving everyone with everything that was in her power.
She was the baby of six and loved her family with all her heart! She only had one sister, Audrey, who was older than her by 8 years, and she was very close to her. But she worshipped her four brothers! But she was closest to her brother Corbin, who was only four years her senior!
I always hoped I would look like her when I grew up, but she had beautiful brown eyes like Jacob and Noah and dark olive skin! I did not have a chance of looking like her with all my redhair and freckles! I stayed with my grandparents a lot as a little child and so when I saw my
Mama it was a treat above all else! I want to tell you what I learned from Mama!

I learned how important "family" was. When I was 6 Mama married a man named John Roberts and for the first time in her life had a little"money". I cannot tell you what I got that Christmas, but I remember Grandma Nell wrapping a huge box of presents for my U. Preston and his family of 6, who were having a hard year! from her I learned to GIVE TO OTHERS FIRST. When I was a teenager one of my friends from church had a thyroid operation and all of her hair fell out. What did Mama do? She brought her to her beauty shop each week and gave her oil treatments to stimulate Delores's scalp! Now this family had five children and very little money, so no charge was ever made! Once she knew a preacher's wife who was in the hospital with Pneumonia and had no insurance-she paid part of the bill and they never knew it! Mama gave when she did not have it to give and found joy in the giving not praise for doing it! There are many, many stories like this!
But I want to talk about her great love for her family, when U. Bill and A. Bertie's newborn passed away, my mother stayed by A. Bertie's side for days helping her any way she could. Later on a few years later, she would be the one to call all the family, when A. Bertie and U. Bill had a horrible auto accident and A. Bertie was killed. She was there in the good and bad times and nothing was important to she and her brothers and sisters as their parents. Each year come rain or shine she helped get a family reunion together where they all met at Mama and Daddy Kees and sat up all night telling wonderful stories of their youth!
What a wonderful life I had as a child to watch such a giving and wonderful woman live life the best she knew how. Yes, there were some demons in her life, but she overcame them and moved forward, loving and giving as she went forward! She never judged anyone! She was only there to lift them up and help them move forward with their lives! She had a great and wonderful love for her grandchildren. How happy she would be today to see all these wonderful children in this family and know of the wonderful lives you live and how you each one love and care for your family!
I am so gratful for a mother who knew and understood, (without ever having been taught), that we are children of a Heavenly Father that loves us and wants us to be kind and caring to all that pass our way, she learned this from her wonderful parents, my beloved Mama and Daddy kees and I watch as it is being passed on to you and I am so grateful for this! Mama trulyunderstood that "if you treat a man like he is the Savior he will become like Him! I will always remember, love, and be grateful for my wonderful mother!