Time to Grow again

Spring has sprung or so the date on the calendar says. Yet in central Maine there is still an abundant snow cover and the lakes are deeply frozen. It will be interesting to see if it’s weeks or a month or more before we actually see buds or blossoms poking through the soil. For the rest of the country apparently, it is spring. My friends are posting pictures of spring buds, talking about signs of green grass and thinking about preparing for planting. How soon do people actual start planning? I know die-hard gardeners plan ALL winter with diagrams, seed catalogs and research. I’m just not one of them. I think I feel obligated to grow, simply because I can. I was brought up that way. There was always a garden in the backyard. My family couldn’t get through a year without planning for fresh veggies, and spending the rest of the summer and fall preserving them. Did it really help the budget that much? Or was it just the pure love of fresh veggies? In part I think it was the ultimate bargain for my mother. A few cents spent for seeds translated to saved dollars on the weekly grocery bill. It filled the expensive freezer….which is still freezing MORE than 50 years after it was first plugged in! What did your family do for gardening or preserving vegetables, fruits or meat? Are there memories associated with that? I can remember hot summer afternoons and a few mornings spent on the sun porch “snipping” beans…pounds of them! Only to be followed by a long evening blanching them in boiling water and quickly cooling them in ice water to be bagged for the freezer. I think that memory contributes to my love of green beans more than any other vegetable, but cooked properly and thoroughly, as part of a veggie-laden winter meal. I don’t recall that we were often allowed into the garden to actually pick, but perhaps as we became more trustworthy and older. I remember a few times helping place the seeds into the row, but I wasn’t always careful enough to get that right and so I gather I wasn’t often asked. I remember digging potatoes in the fall, even getting my school clothes too dirty on one occasion because I failed to change when I got home…heading to the garden too soon. Extra veggies were always delegated to the "veggie stand" on the front lawn, that actually was an old table from the "play house" behind the barn and a folding lawn chair. I think we sold cucumbers at five cents a piece or six for a quarter. Could that be possible? Were they really that cheap or is my memory forgetting the real price? Either way the sale of veggies, tomatoes, cucumbers maybe beans or potatoes, and of course, corn, supplemented the back-to-school budget so we had funds for a new fall wardrobe. There was a science to it and I gather I absorbed it rather than “learned” it, because a lot of it stays with me today. I plant the way I “know” how just because it feels right. More recently I’ve studied gardening mostly to reassure myself I’m doing it right, I think. Then I don’ t remember what I know and what I’ve learned. Guess it doesn’t make any difference if the plants grow and produce. Then again I keep questioning, why I do this? Because I can or because I know what I’m doing or because of the memories it brings to mind. You must have memories of summer gardening and growing. Have you written them down? There's that reminder again....Write it Down!