It's Just a Country State of Mind: The garden sessions

I'm affectionately calling this column the "garden sessions."

My earliest recollections of living in the country when I was a child involved gardening with my father.

Gardening at my house was a family affair. Now I found out about the difference between a weed and a plant, but his mistake was walking off and leaving me to my own devices. Yeah, I pulled the weeds and planted the plants. Needless to say, my father wasn't very happy about it, but that was on my very first lesson in gardening.

You would think that after he would have taken me off weeding duty, but that wasn't the case. The next session, I was "pulling weeds" again. This time he left me with a row of beans. He gave me a bean plant and told me to pull up anything that didn't look like that little plant. I studied that little plant for a long time.

Once he was satisfied elsewhere. By the time he came back, I must have pulled up a dozen bean plants.

My father believed that gardening was in my blood. I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but I was going to find out. I was obsessed with everything and wanted to find out everything about the job of growing and freezing all the vegetables that was our living that whole summer.

When the vegetables were done growing, they had to be picked. My mother had to keep picking in the garden and sometimes they didn't. But we all enjoyed working in the garden and sometimes they didn't. But we all enjoyed working in the garden for many years. It turned out to be more than a hobby, it became a way of life.

Now that my children are grown, I don't grow big gardens like I used to. In fact, like to go to the local farmer's market and roadside stands to buy fresh vegetables.

I realize now what my father meant about gardening being in my blood. What he really meant was that we pass it down from one generation to the next. Got all my children to like gardening as much as I do. It gives me a lot of joy to hear one of my adult children, it became a family affair. I wasn't a taskmaster like my father, but I learned that I had a natural green thumb.

My garden sometimes enjoyed working in the garden and sometimes they didn't. But we all enjoyed working in the garden for many years. It turned out to be more than a hobby, it became a way of life.

At least I got rewarded for my efforts. There was always a special dessert after dinner or a bag of candy waiting for me at the end of the day.

When I grew up, I started gardening myself, and I actually loved it, and I had found myself reading books on gardening and ordering seed catalogues. I began to cultivate some of the best gardens you have ever seen. Those garden sessions had paid off. And when I had children, it became a family affair.

There's no greater gift than handing down our knowledge and wisdom to the next generation. And all that time I thought I was just pulling weeds in the ground. They were planting seeds in me. For the future. And I planted those same seeds in my own children.

There's no greater gift than handing down our knowledge and wisdom to the next generation. Summer's here!

— Susan