My son goes to the store for me most Fridays because he is off work and I am working. He has become a terrific shopper. The other day I asked him to pick up some tomatoes for us at Publix. I prefer the produce from a farm stand but when in a hurry we settle for Publix.
He brought home tomatoes that are deep red, all connected to a stem, and I found myself saying "Those tomatoes are beautiful!"
That phrase just popped out.
As soon as I said it I thought, that was Mom's expression. My mother regarded vegetables in a state of what she considered perfection with deep awe and reverence. She would exclaim over them the same way an art collector might get excited by seeing a painting he coveted, or the way a dancer might view another dancer's perfect pas de deux, or the way a mother might feel seeing her newborn baby for the first time.
Why?
I think it's in our blood, the love of the land and how it feeds us.
Mom's generation was only the second one off the farm. She was a teacher, then a SAHM. Her brothers were a college administrator and an automotive manager. My grandfather Hasty was raised on a farm, and his father expected him to farm, but Papa was given an opportunity to play professional baseball and he took it. However, when World War II came, Papa sought out a job where he managed farms in South Carolina, and some of Mom's earliest memories involve farm life. (Papa felt like his family would be safer on a farm way out in the country if America were to be invaded.)
In the memoir I compiled after Mom died, Singing to the Cows, there are many reminiscences about farm life:
The farm meant we lived in a pretty white frame house, with grass in the yard, and I think it was on a dirt road. We had a pretty front porch and a big screened porch out back. There were several other buildings, a huge barn, and a long tractor shed among them. There was a fence out back and sometimes an animal was brought in to eat the grass.
We had a huge barn with a fenced in lot. In fact, almost all the farm was fenced for the animals. We had three cows, two horses, and several mules. Sometimes we had little calves - I loved them. Daddy, Bobby, and Don each had a cow to milk. Don pretty much made a pet of any animal he dealt with.
In every home where we ever lived [we lived in 5 different houses when I was growing up] Mom and Dad got outside and planted flowers and vegetables, and spent a lot of time tending to everything. The yards were always barren and disappointing but by the time we left they would be transformed into lush and beautiful places. Dad would come home from working as a bank VP, put on old stained clothes, and go work in the yard, which was how he relaxed. Mom read a little magazine called Organic Gardening for years. As long as my grandmother was alive, I often heard Mom asking her advice about gardening. She always said Memaw could "winter" her outside plants and keep them going in cold weather, a skill she didn't teach Mom, for unknown reasons.
In her 50's and 60's Mom had stopped working in the yard due to arthritis but she was active in her garden club in Augusta, and kept getting re-elected to the presidency year after year because she was so excellent in that role. She always found great speakers.
My father grew up just down the road from a farm owned by his grandparents and run by his uncle Claude after his grandfather's death. As a teenager, he worked on the farm in the summers. He loved to grow tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, etc. He spent many hours hauling soil from the bank of the lake to make raised garden beds for Mom when they lived on the lake near Knoxville in the 1980's. That rich soil was fantastic for growing flowers and vegetables. Dad came from many generations of farmers too, although he and his brothers were all professional men. Each one married women who were terrific gardeners, which I think was not a coincidence!
I never had any interest in gardening until I became a mom. In fact, I was always puzzled by my parents' near obsession with growing things. When Mom and I bought our house together in 2005, though, I wanted my children to know the love of growing food and flowers. I felt compelled to garden. It was inexplicable to me at the time but now I think I understand it.
I adopted children with a deep love of fresh veggies and fruits. They spent their early years in Russia and Kazakhstan, where it was not possible to get fresh fruits and veggies in the winter. I never had to fuss at them about eating fruits and vegetables. In fact, I sometimes found them in the garden eating tomatoes, onions, and strawberries right there, and of course I didn't scold them.
For countless generations, my ancestors farmed. I think a love of gardening, the miracle of seeing a seed become a beautiful flower or a delicious vegetable or fruit, is part of my DNA. I live in an apartment now, and I miss growing things. I miss it so much I try not to even think about it. There is something magical about it. Creating your own nourishment feeds the soul as well as the body.
Below, me and Mom around 1985; my kids in the garden right after I adopted my son, and the painting was done by my uncle Lewis Thompson, of the Henderson farmhouse where his mother grew up.
