Back In The Day (When I Was Young...I'm Not A Kid Anymore...But Some Days I Sit And Wish I Was A Kid Again)
When I was 18 years old I arrived in Washington D.C. for college. The hardest thing I had to get through to people was that contrary to popular belief every person raised in the south didn’t live in the country, backwoods, or farms. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with that at all. For those of us that had relatives that did not live in the city it was not fun at all to go visit, and be put to work. The first time I picked fresh corn I told my mother when I got home, “It didn’t taste like Green Giant.” On that note I’d like to welcome SnazzyGarden(look her up on Instagram) as this week’s guest storyteller. Her story is D.O.P.E. and I hope y'all enjoy it as much as I did.
I grew up in New Orleans Louisiana, with a single mother, 1 younger sibling & a gang of cousins. We'd all (the cousins) plot to get together at my grandmother's house every weekend to do cousin stuff. 1st thing we knew we had to do was clean up on Saturday mornings before we went outside, (even though we didn't live there) but we didn't mind. I was a typical city kid & always had a great time with the cousins & other neighborhood kids doing neighborhood kid stuff. That's where I was taught & learned most of the basic life lessons I live by to this day.
My childhood memories are fond and full of joy except summers! Every summer they (the parents) would load us up and ship us out to the country to my great great grandparents house/farm. I hated it! It was boring (compared to the city)! It was dirty(farm life)! There were no street lights(to chill under) or streets for that matter (dirt roads).
The rooster would sing before the sunrise. My grandparents were already up lighting the wood stove,cooking breakfast, & getting the day started. We(the cousins & I) HAD to go get eggs from the smelly,old, handcrafted chicken coop then feed the horse, pigs etc. It seemed like we fed animals, pulled weeds, & picked fruit all day some days! There was a huge orchard with fruit and nut trees galore. My grandmother would make and sell jams, preserves,& bags of nuts (mainly pecans) to the locals. I was used to city life and just going to the grocery store so I didn't quite understand why they went through so much trouble out in that dirt and heat everyday. I tried to dodge being out there like the plague! I was so busy trying to compare where I was to where I was used to being, trying to create what I called city fun in the country. I basically was ignoring everything that was in front of me thinking that it was a thing of the past and that my grandparents were behind in the times...ya know...old fashioned... I was around 10-12 yrs old then.
My great grandparents passed and although the land remained in the family, no one in my family ever had any type of garden or farm since then. I've never been interested in the dirt and heat so I never thought about it (the farm or gardening) again. Let’s fast forward some 30 years later a friend bought me an unwanted cucumber plant that sat almost 3 weeks in a nursery pot close to death. A quick Google search led me to a "How To Grow A Cucumber" tutorial, And it's been on like Donkey Kong ever since. I’m now 42, and I am literally JUST realizing within the last 5-10 years how much I didn't pay attention. The info I must've missed, the questions I didn't care to ask, & the underlying lessons that were taught and ignored. NOW I want fresh eggs,to be a gardener, a homesteader, farmer, canner, beekeeper etc...
Although that cucumber plant forced my gardening hand, the memories of my grandparents focus, hard work, & determination along with the peace I get being in the dirt and heat is what keeps my garden growing. So here I am 30 years later fumbling through my garden, trying to channel my elders wishing I knew now what they knew then. As the old folks say hindsight is 20/20.....Remembering Lila & Joseph Sidney.
SN
(SnazzyGarden)
