My Mother's Garden

Today is the 2 year anniversary of my Mother's passing, so I thought it would be a fitting tribute to her memory to post some photos I was pleased to come across recently in one of my albums. I took these pictures with our first decent (for those days) 35 mm camera, in 1977. They show my Mom's abundant garden on our farm, located on the North Dakota prairie.




Mom, in her garden with Benji, the dog. Since it is a cool, northern zone 3 there, nothing can be planted until after Memorial Day....so this is probably around late June or early July. The Corn is up and growing , with Peas in the foreground. (Click on photo to enlarge)





The next three photos were taken in the fall of the same year. Here you can see the Corn...tall and tasseled out, with Squash plants on the right and Cabbages in the left foreground, along with the yellow flowers of Dill in the center. Her garden was not weedless, but it was very productive! I remember Mom enticing us kids with spending money for the County Fair, in exchange for weeding 'X' number of rows in the garden. :-) Some days, supper hour would come and go....the kitchen was silent, and Mom was no where to be found, until we realized she was lost in the garden. I now find myself doing this....there is much to do and time passes so quickly when you're working in the garden!




A huge Cabbage, with two of my (then) little sisters flanking either side. I was the big sister.....the oldest of 6 girls. I have both an older and a younger brother, too, bringing the total to 8 children in our family. These photos were taken on a visit home to the farm, when I was 22.





The flowers at the edge of Mom's garden were beautiful! This old scanned photo simply doesn't do them justice. ( Please click on photo to enlarge and see detail ) Many returned as volunteers from the previous years self-sown seed. There were Bachelor buttons, California Poppies, Marigolds and Zinnias. Behind the flowers is what looks to be Potatoes and a Cucumber patch. We always had dozens of jars of dill pickles on our pantry shelves!

So....there you have it. Proof that I come by my love of growing things quite naturally. Is there such a thing as a gardening gene? :-)

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Mom, your memory is blessed. You were a wonderful example to me in all things, not the least of which was the love and labor you put into your garden and the countless hours spent preserving its bounty to feed and nourish your family. You are dearly missed!

In Memory

It was a year ago today that my dear Mother passed away. She loved spending time in her garden, so perhaps my love for growing things was, at least in part....inherited from her.

I'm posting this photo, taken last fall of a hollyhock in my garden, in honor of Mom. She always had hollyhocks growing all around our farm house, on the North Dakota prairie, and they remind me of her.

My brother found this full page photo and poem in an issue of the "Birds and Blooms" magazine, and it was such a fitting tribute to our Mom. (See the words of the poem below.)


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Mother's Garden

My mother loved the flowers,
Each season brought new blooms.
With joy she'd plant and till and weed,
It chased away her glooms.

She know the names of each she tended
A master of her trade.
Her hands were strong and knew no wrong,
The best God ever made.

She tried to teach me all she knew,
But little did I care
For if I needed flowers,
My mother would be there.

My mother loved her garden,
'Til heaven she did go,
Where growing seasons never end,
And blooms don't fade, but grow.

And now I tend the flowers,
A love that's real and true.
For when I'm in my garden, Mom,
I'm closest there to you.

Beverly Ann Batten Kandrick

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I miss you, Mom!