My Grandma Mabel was the tiniest woman I have ever known, she had size one shoes and stood well beneath five feet tall. Her hair was perpetually white and she always had a smile and kind word for most everyone. She was mother to five children, teaching them all a strong work ethic and the love of books. Her farm is in Central Indiana, is nearly 100 years old, and always smelled of roses when she lived in it. I remember her property as a large group of buildings, outhouses, and barns, all smartly white washed – with a beautiful white picket fence which always reminded me of Huck Finn.
Grandma spent amazing time with me. Her kitchen smelled of coffee and she spent hours with me talking, playing games like scrabble and cards and generally making me happy. She would fix oatmeal for me for breakfast and then she would have a piece of crispy toast in a saucer. In an Irish tradition, she poured half a cup of coffee over it like soup and eat the toast, coffee and all, which was a smart way to use up day old bread.
When it was fully operational, Grandma grew many things on her farm. However, by the time I came around the farm had stopped producing. Her vegetable garden was used for canning and growing organic vegetables before the term was coined, helped support her family, but had been given up long ago. Grandma did not have a traditional garden when I remembered her, but she gave me her gardening knowledge in spite of that. Grandma had the most fantastic fields and pastures of country meadow which stretched out from her front gate. My cousins and I climbed trees, walked fence rows, and rode ponies through pastures of flowering native prairie plants, filling the air with a heady scent while she watched over us.
Grandma had an encyclopedic knowledge of nearly every herb, wildflower, and medicinal plant and could quote their country names. She and I would walk through flowering fields, smiling and talking as the fields scent danced around us while she quoted which plants were poisonous, helpful, or simply beautiful. Her garden was not a traditional garden like so many others I know, but its content seemed far healthier and greener than most I have been in.
My favorite activity she did with me that taught me about both nature and science was to pick a stem of Queen Anne’s Lace and put in a vase in her kitchen. We would color the water red with food coloring and within a day the delicate white flowers would be changed a deep red too. When I was a young child, that simple act was a miracle of happy surprise. To Grandma it was a science lesson I needed to be taught. Everything is a lesson - which is, of course, one of the most important things she taught me.
Because of this special Grandma, a garden has always been definitively more than a “traditional” perennial bed in my soul. She died over 20 years ago, but her love continues in my heart. Her native and inspired gardening lessons have lasted my entire life. Grandma taught me that life is what you make of it - and treating nature with respect is important. She grew up in an era that she had to learn to work with what she had and improvise when she did not have money or knowledge. This basic sustainable and green idea is what we should be all considering in the difficult times we live in.
Whenever I think of Grandma Mabel, I think of the scent of roses and coffee, mixed with the wild flowering meadow out her front gate. It leaves me with memories of the smiles and laughter she gifted me from her heart. I remember her hand holding mine and guiding me in nature.
Follow Mabel’s example - - enjoy what you have and make the best of it.
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Filed under: Green Family
Tags: garden, grandma, green, green lifestyle, green living, prairie, scent
Shawna, I enjoy your blog. You might like a poem I wrote about weeds on my blog. Drop by.