stolen from maidengurl

[arliss]

1. Scan my interest list and pick out the one that seems the most odd to you.

2. I’ll explain it.

3. Then you post this in your journal so other people can ask you about your interests.

Comments

[fufaraw]

When I was growing up we had a half-acre vegetable garden, which I was forced to work in every summer, weeding, carrying water, picking beans and peas and tomatoes and squash and cucumbers and corn. Given that my mother never met a vegetable she couldn't cook to mush, I also hated vegetables, and saw no good reason why I shouldn't be lying on a quilt in the shade, reading or writing, or riding my bike and daydreaming, rather than bent over endless rows of stoopid stinky tomatoes plants that made your skin itch and burn, in the hot sun, and every once in awhile being buzzed by wasps or bumblebees, turning up a leaf full of beanbug eggs, ew! Hated it. And then in the cool evenings it was sit on the porch and shuck, shell or snap boatloads of the stuff I'd weeded, watered, and picked, and then it was wash endless pans of glass quart and pint jars, being extra super careful not to break any or chip the rims. I didn't have to help with the canning, thank heaven, but I did have to stand by in case Mom or Dad needed a hand with something while they couldn't turn loose of what they were doing. All that time, all that effort, all that attention and work--and at the end of it, what did you have? Stupid vegetables. Yuck. The only fun thing I ever got to pick was strawberries, and I got hollered at if I ate any. And then Mom cut them all up and cooked them and made strawberry pies--we never had just strawberries with cream, or plain washed and capped berries, or even shortcake. Just doughy runny soupy cobbler sort of strawberry pies, which, okay, good. But still, cooked to death and mostly sugar and flour, so the connection to having actually grown was sort of dim.

I never wanted a garden. But when I moved out, my world expanded, and I discovered flower gardens. Formal gardens of estates, informal gardens at the homes of friends, and I was charmed. Not enough to acutally want to do the work, but enough to ease my hatred of dirt and growing things.

It was sideways, through reading about gardens in novels, historicals of all eras and modern ones, that the flower garden began to appeal. And then I visited some historical site and walked through the herb garden on a warm late spring day while the plants still glistened from watering, and I fell in love. We had--and still have--no real place to plant a real garden, but we have a second floor deck, and I began to read on how to grow things in containers, so we could have a garden of pretty flowers and wonderful smelly herbs. And there you go. The more I read, the more I tried, the more I tried, the better my success, and the more I read...etc.