My Daughter’s Garden

I might have mentioned before that I don’t come from a long line of gardeners. Grandma from New Jersey could kill silk flowers. Grandma from New York tended a Victory Garden during the war, so the story goes, but by the time I came on the scene nothing much was left of it but a couple of grayed old pieces of fallen down fence and a few strawberry plants. My mother’s idea of veggie harvesting was a trip to the green grocer, and my father, colorblind and unimpressed by anywhere un-airconditioned, asked me one May about the “nice smelling flower bushes” by the driveway. What color, I asked? Silly me. I dunno, he replied, kinda gray.

Needless to say, I didn’t hold out much gardening hope for my kids, given the DNA involved. How happy I was to be proven wrong.

Two summers ago my older daughter and her husband bought their first house, a cozy Victorian on a pretty little street with a backyard that wandered down past ancient apple trees to a lovely brook. New England perfection.

The only problem was a huge geriatric box elder tree squatting in the center of the lawn, so ugly and immense that even the magnificent sugar maples on the four corners of the yard looked sad , forgotten, and small. Take it down, said my daughter.

My husband wields a mean chain saw. The rest, as they say, is silence. And firewood.

There stood my daughter, Caroline on her hip and holding Charlie by the hand. She surveyed her newly sunny kingdom. She had a vision.

Last spring my husband built and installed the fence and gate for a 12×12 garden. I helped with seed selection and the buying of the very best veggie plants from – where else? – Weston Nurseries. Great herb plants, too, and you can put in many of them soon!  But everything else she did herself: planting and weeding and watering and thinking unkind thoughts about slugs as she set out saucers of beer. (Could someone mention to the upwardly mobile young people of today that slugs enjoy Bud Lite as much as they do Corona?) She did have one enthusiastic helper: Charlie happily helped harvest his favorite cherry tomatoes.

The results were amazing, not only because my daughter is a wonderful cook who innovatively used everything she grew, or because she taught her two kids to adore veggies. Her husband is slowly but surely coming around, just as her father did once upon a time.

But the most amazing and wonderful thing to watch is the birth of a brand new gardener. She loves what she’s doing. She spent the winter discussing the relative merits of this or that zucchini. How about that striped eggplant? Why didn’t the brussels sprouts do well last year? Is it too soon to start tomato seeds? And the certified mall rat asked for a tumbling composter for Christmas.

Amazing, I say with pride and a grin. Mirabile Dictu, would say her Great Grandma from New York. Mazel Tov would say her Great Grandma from New Jersey.

Her father would say something equally encouraging , but he’s a bit busy in the barn at the moment, building more sections of fence for a garden that is about to double in size. Some things never change, including a Daddy who can never say no to his little girl. Nothing amazing about that.