Since becoming a 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 farm life 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.
He worked long, hard hours and I wish I had thanked him more often for all he did and sacrificed.
In addition to the rice fields, he managed to always have a vegetable garden and would bring in the bounty for delicious meatless suppers. Several years he grew watermelons (which was his and my favorite), and I think I even set up a stand one summer in the front yard to sell what we couldn’t eat up!
Then there was the other influence. My Mother absolutely loved flowers! It didn’t matter what it was, if it had color and fragrance and could grow in gumbo soil in our yard in Brazoria County, she tried it.
We had a long flagstone walkway to the street and in the days before noisy edgers or blowers, I would edge and weed that walkway by hand. But the thing was, when you stood up and saw the results, WOW, how proud I was of that straight line and of how pretty it made it for people to walk to our front door. That’s when the gardening bug started gnawing on me, and he hasn’t let go. But don’t even bring up mowing that huge lawn with a push mower!
Mother also planted a confederate jasmine on the lattice out on the breezeway plus a huge Lady Banksia rose that grew on the other side. Live oaks in the front, a cluster of three pine trees, two crape myrtles at the end of that walkway she got from her sister in Houston. Years later, old friends still comment that we had the prettiest home and yard in town!
She loved that yard,and she unwittingly passed that love on to her four daughters who all have the same passion for a beautiful yard.
So I managed to grow up, (even after all that hard Saturday yardwork) married and after living in two distinct areas of Texas, with a seven-year ‘endurance’ in Michigan, my husband and I moved to Tyler, where he grew up. The very next year, I saw the ad for MG class and joined up and haven’t looked back. Well, maybe on really brutal, summer days digging bulbs for our sale or bitter, 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 the stuff tough gardeners are made of! So out I go and never regret it. I’ve had it worse.
I have loved living in Tyler for nine years, but my favorite thing is wonderful sandy loam soil that will grow most anything. My next favorite thing is all the good friends I have acquired through the MG program.
I’ve raised a tiny Sassafras tree that a bird gifted me in the flower bed to a seven 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 and my favorite, daffodils!
This year we’re going back to a vegetable garden where I was ‘trying’ a perennial bed and am excited that we’ll have Celebrity tomatoes, okra, black-eyed peas and squash. I’ve tried to keep my yard manageable for what we’re able to do and I love getting out there every day, if possible.
I’ll do anything to have blooms, fruits and vegetables… just don’t ask me to edge any long flagstone walks.
— Smith County Master Gardeners are volunteer educators certified and coordinated by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.