Garden journal

Since becoming a Smith County Master Gardener in 2015, I started thinking back on when my love of gardening really blossomed. I suppose being a farmer’s daughter was certainly an early influence. Having no experience in farming and after a few years with Dow Chemical during the war years, Daddy decided to try his hand at growing rice. That was not an easy endeavor, as you can imagine, with frequent summer hurricanes “laying the crop down” at just the wrong time. I remember asking him, “Daddy, why can’t you just scoop it all up to save?” “Can’t be done after it sits in water” was his reply, so another year was lost and creditors were not very understanding. But there were many successful years and our household wanted for nothing. On the edge of the rice fields, he always had a vegetable garden and would bring in the bounty for delicious meatless suppers. He worked long, hard hours and I wish I had thanked him more often.

Then there was the other influence. My Mother absolutely loved flowers. Didn’t matter the color or fragrance, if they could grow in clay soil in Brazoria County, she would try them. Of course, all those flowers and huge St. Augustine lawn needed care so many an early Saturday morning I could hear her downstairs, “I could use a little help outside.” With the other three sisters not answering the call, guess who was left? You got it. I’d dress and be outside in a flash. We had a long, flagstone walkway to the street and in the days before noisy edgers and blowers, I would edge, weed and sweep that walkway by hand. But the thing was, when I stood up and saw the results, how proud I was of how pretty I had made it for people walking to the front door. That’s when the gardening bug started gnawing on me and he hasn’t let go.

We had a precious Cape Cod style house with a little, white picket fenced area off the kitchen that had a Chinese tallow tree with all those white berry clusters and in the flower beds, a plethora of red spider lilies. (As a master gardener, I’ve learned those are Lycoris Radiata and we sell them in our annual Fall bulb sale.) Mother also planted a Confederate jasmine on the breezeway lattice plus a Lady Banksia rose on the other side. Live oaks in the front yard, along with a cluster of three pine trees (in South Texas, no less!) and two crape myrtles that flanked the end of that walkway. Years later, our friends still comment that we had the prettiest yard and home in town. Mother loved that yard and she passed that love on to her four daughters who all have the same passion for a beautiful yard. She would be pleased to see all we’ve accomplished, both as homemakers and avid gardeners. And yes, I wish I had thanked her, too, more often, for so many things!

So I managed to grow up, (even after all that hard Saturday yard work), married and after living in two distinct areas of Texas, with a seven-year stint in Michigan, my husband and I moved to Tyler, where he grew up. But first, we lived in Brazoria County, where I grew up, and we called yard work “defensive gardening.” Things grew so vigorously, you worried that a wisteria vine would strangle you in the night. In fact, I had one in our first house and in trying to trim it, pulled on one runner and had to coil it up like a water hose. It ran under the entire length of the house, which was sitting on cinder blocks. I’ve yet to have another wisteria.

Then we transferred to Michigan with his job, and for the first time in my life, experienced trillium in the spring, lilacs and peonies in the summer and oh, the beautiful leaf color in the fall. I won’t talk about the winter, but we tried to plant our first vegetable garden in March. Ha. The spade hit the frozen ground and it was May before we could even think about planting, and we were begging the tomatoes to turn red before the first freeze in September. But I will say, if you can get through a Michigan Winter, you deserve the beauty of the other three seasons. They are glorious!

Retirement came and it was back to Texas to Kerrville in the hill country. My parents retired there and were getting up in years and I knew they needed help. So for 18 years I tried to garden in the caliche, rocky, dry nothingness of three different yards. If you put a shovel in, you immediately hit rock but somehow I managed to have nandina, yaupon shrubs, red yucca, lantana and lots of scrub oaks. I really missed the flowers. However, I was successful in growing an outstanding specimen of “Nelly Moser” clematis.

And now to Tyler where we moved in 2013. We have loved living here and my favorite thing is the wonderful sandy loam soil that will grow most anything. The very next year, I saw the ad for SCMG class, joined up and haven’t looked back. Well, maybe on really brutal, summer days digging bulbs for our sale or the freezing days in winter working in the IDEA garden, I sometimes wonder “what was I thinking, I’m too old to be doing this.” But then I think, “of course you can, that’s what gardeners do.” So out I go and never regret it. Who could not love a place that can grow roses, azaleas, dogwood, redbud, bulbs of all kinds and being able to garden with all those wonderful master gardeners. Which brings me to my next favorite thing about living here, all the good friends I’ve made in the SCMG program. It is such a fun support group for gardening addicts.

So, our yard in Tyler is a work in progress but so far I’ve grown a seedling sassafras tree that a bird gifted me in the flower bed to a 7 foot specimen. I didn’t even know about Sassafras until I moved here! And I’ve got azaleas, both Indica and Encore, several clematis, coral honeysuckle, roses, redbuds, camellias, pink rain lilies, and, my favorite, daffodils. This year, we’re growing a vegetable garden and am excited that we’ll have Celebrity tomatoes, okra, black-eyed peas and squash, just like Daddy grew. I’ve tried to keep my yard manageable for what we’re now able to do, but I love getting out there everyday, if possible. We will love the vegetable suppers and with them, maybe some rice, but what’s a farmer’s daughter to do? Mother cooked a lot of rice, too. I’ll do anything to have blooms and vegetables — just don’t ask me to edge any long flagstone walks. I’m way past that.