That Old Feeling

“I saw you last night and got that old feeling”...

“That Old Feeling”, lyrics by Lew Brown, music by Sammy Fain

My shin sports a brand new welt.  My hands could etch glass. And the boots I’ve worn every snowy day this winter have suddenly sprung a leak.  My feet have ’that cold feeling’.

There are already worries a plenty….too much weather, too little help, too many plants for too few pots….stuck trucks and frozen vents and cancelled orders.  An unexplained shortage of sunpatiens. The perennial lack of scaevola. Happens every year….’that old feeling’.

But problems a plenty flutter away like dry leaves any time I slit the packing tape on a box labeled ‘Live Plants’:   instead, I hear Ella swinging soulfully about ‘that old feeling’….as I pull out a tray of potential springtime.

Ella Sings 'That Old Feeling'

It’s been that way for years.  

Never mind the patience Blake exhibited when, instead of an intrusive family, I brought a collection of houseplants that was more than enough to provide a healthy level of oxygen in our first apartment.  No furniture, no problem! After we moved to the farm, I discovered a new hobby: propagation! A pinch here or broken stem there stuck into a tiny 2” plastic pot and placed under a cheap fluorescent shop light and lovingly watched over and watered carefully almost always yielded a baby.  Hey! I was good at this! Not only that, but there were hobbyists out there who supported their plant habits by selling cuttings and fresh leaves to folks like me who wanted to try a different begonia or a fancier African violet….

Our tiny house was being overrun.

Unfortunately, I did not have a mail order business...or any other kind of business...that would offset the increases of the plant population due to propagation and/or acquisition.  I tried. I painted a sign with the name “Hurst Greenery” and displayed it at a weekend flea market at the Tarkio Community Building. Even seen through the foggy, forgiving resolution of an Instamatic camera, it’s a pretty pathetic little effort.  

Another attempt at inventory reduction from a few years later….

These look a little better…

Eventually it became clear that the peak of the house plant boom had passed. I had a yard, a garden, and two cute little girls that liked to play outdoors more than hang out in a barren basement. Propagation by cuttings gave way to propagation by seeds.  A few trays and some plastic wrap and my germination chamber was complete. Seeds were cheap!

And...it turns out, the plants one grows from seeds could be sold.  Here are a couple more shots of some early efforts.

I cringe now when I see the weeds under the benches, the stretched petunias, the starved tomatoes and marigolds.  The camera doesn’t lie; there are also pictures of equally ugly poinsettias and overgrown impatiens, jury rigged wiring and some home grown greenhouses that weren’t up to the wind and weather load of Deadman’s Hollow.  

They were all part and parcel of the learning curve.

These old photos have a certain piquancy.  They are lovable in the way your first burnt cakes or tough roasts are funny years later.

“There’ll be no new romance for me, it’s foolish to start….”

That old (Spring) feeling….

is still in my heart.

Flowers for Mom

I was always nervous when Grandma Hurst made her annual visit to the greenhouse; she loved flowers and I never wanted to steer her wrong with the flowers we had available. We grew miniature roses back then...and Grandma loved roses. They didn't really flourish in the corner under the evergreens, but she picked them out anyway and never seemed to care if they turned out to be annuals, not perennials. Grandma and Grandpa loved taking their family out, but the Mother's Day she decided the thirteen of us should celebrate up at the Tall Corn in Shenandoah turned out to be a one time only event. First the little kids ate all the bread; then they ate all the crackers; Grandma huffed as her great grandchildren went from restless to worse.

After Mothers Day church, all the mothers attending church at Christ Lutheran in Orland Park received a little fuzzy blue ageratum as they departed. Even today, the fresh but pungent scent of the plant speaks to my memory as the flower of Mother's Day, just as the scent of marigolds is connected to summer and Vacation Bible School. Some years we bring geraniums, some years wave petunias, or maybe begonias, but ladies at First Baptist of Tarkio leave with flowers Mother's Day Sunday too.

Even though we were working on Mother's Day while Ben was young, he still honored his mom with a pretty corsage Sunday morning. While other moms and grandmas pinned their flowers on their frocks, this mom wore her incongruous posy on her t-shirt until it wilted on Mother's Day afternoon. I still have a dried corsage of little pale mauve roses on the windowsill of my kitchen.

It will not come as a shock that Mother’s Day gifts were inclined to follow a gardening theme. Trees, shrubs, pots or whatever the garden center was long on that spring came home in the back of the trailer and was ceremoniously unloaded to appropriate oohs and aaahs.

Except for the year Blake made an evening delivery to one of our country customers and backed the trailer over some statuary they had for sale. That year what I got for Mother’s Day was a concrete cherub. He was designed to hold a bird bath over his head, but the birdbath shattered on impact. Without the birdbath, he looked like an underage waiter at a bar, jauntily weaving his way through the crowd with a tray of beers.

Monday begins another frantic week of flower deliveries as the days before Mother's Day intersect with the planting season for city parks and fundraisers for school groups from Kansas City to Norfolk. For this mother, it is a time to count blessings as my Fitbit counts steps. Loading the trucks this past weekend was a family affair in the chill and damp and mud that has marked the end of April. Josh showed off his ability to count; Lizzie and Abbie showed off balancing flowers high overhead and the boys were promised that carrying flats would increase arm strength for baseball. We slipped and slid, laughed, and teased, and promised pop to those who stuck it out all afternoon. And everyone did! With energy a plenty to jump on their bikes and ride to check on their pigs.

The moms and dads this day were the kids of yesterday, who pitched in to help with varying degrees of enthusiasm or stoicism, but stayed to work until the work was done. Mother's Day is a time to reflect on those who made the mold, who set the example, who steered us in the right direction while we were young and oblivious, who we appreciate more as we look back.

P.S. It is an especially memorable week for this family because Lizzie and Gabe and Abbie all turn nine. Mother's Day may be for flowers, but these kids will need ice cream!

  

 Posted with Blogsy

Fresh Start

Just sitting here watching the fans in shirtsleeves at the Sunday afternoon football game in Phoenix while winter storm warnings for counties from Atchison to Washington flash a florid pink and scary words like 'ice accumulation' and 'power outages' crawl across the bottom of the screen. I consider how much we would benefit from a few days of nothing more than black coffee and hot tea boiled on the gas range, then contemplate all the Christmas cookies and cheeses and even eggnog still in the house and realize even an ice storm will not compensate for the overeating of the days previous.

But...guess what?  Dreaming of spring isn't fattening at all!  We are ending the old year with all the greenhouses under cover...covering one the morning on the 30th and two on New Year's Eve.  It was crispy yesterday, the thermometer holding in single digits after the sun rose, but we worked up a sweat peeling the 48 foot wide sheet of poly away from itself like pastry dough off of parchment.  This morning the menfolk left Lee and me in the office to order springtime bloomers by the hundreds while they frostbit their kneecaps fastening plastic while crawling through the packed snow in an 8 inch gutter 10 feet above the ground.  It was a perfect morning...sun shining, sky blue, wind nonexistent...except for that whole 8 degree thing.  Suffice it to say, some of the folks from Hurst Greenery will have earned a righteous toast tonight as compensation for the toll on their joints!

Before you know it, we will be sticking thousands of geranium cuttings cool packed for their trip north from warmer climes. Propane will be whistling through the heaters at night and the vents will froth a foggy cloud during the day.  Our doggy companions will be left on the doorsteps of the greenhouse lest they discover the wonders of indoor heating; we will keep our eyes peeled for signs of other undesirable and unlovable wildlife thrilled by the prospect of a winter salad. Speaking of greens, we just ordered tomato and cucumber seeds, reminders of longer days months. We long for these fervently after the summer of 2015 which grew beautiful flowers but not many tomatoes or cukes.

 In the meantime, I got my own seasonal box of goodies from a new acquaintance in Wisconsin, a lady of many talents judging from the gifts she sent for Christmas in the Country Gift Exchange!  

Thanks to the imagination and organizational efforts of some energetic rural bloggers, more than fifty of us scribblers from all over the U.S. ( and outside the country as well!) were given a virtual "name drawn out of a hat" with their social information and self description. Those that are gifted crafters sent homemade treasures; those with a talent for baking, or canning, or just knew someone with that knack, might send a box with jams, or candies, or preserves.  And the rest of us took stock of what our secret friend might find appealing and shopped accordingly...in my case, that entailed making purchases from vendors at the November Me-Market, and, of course, relying on the great good taste and creativity of our friends at the Flower Mill.  I enjoyed putting together a "goodie box", especially when buying the gifts from people I knew made the purchases a two for one deal: a jollier Christmas retail season for them and me!

For winter, there is the winsome homespun snowman with the crooked smile, carrying the Christmas spirit wherever he goes.  He's a warm fuzzy even as he sits silhouetted against the bare trees and snow.  And for spring, Jacky's squishy hand made, hand felted wool mushroom, a harbinger of those late April days when the wet creek banks are warmed by a strengthening sun. No woods, no walks for me during those days when we are busy delivering pretty pots and baskets, so I am happy to have this little mushroom close by to enjoy.

Summertime is represented by another handmade goodie, the little felted carrot pin, the perfect decoration for a gal like me who spends so many of her waking hours in the dirt.  Finally, a bright pieced placemat of golden sunflowers and a gigantic cookbook of so many muffins I could make a different one every day for TWO YEARS!  Betcha the guys in the combines and auger wagons and trucks will enjoy that kind of variety when the excitement of the first days of harvest grind into weeks....and then months....

Jacky is a busy lady; she volunteers, she has her own business...wish we were closer so I could visit her shop and talk about small town life.  In the meantime, I'll keep up with her on Facebook, read her blog at dickybirdsnest.blogspot.com and tell her thanks so much for sharing some of her Christmas in Wisconsin with me in Missouri!

 CountryFairBlogParty

There's Rosemary...that's for Remembrance

If you are a long time resident of a small town, you are no stranger to loss. The more rooted one is in a place, the more one recognizes the truth in John Donne's writing:

"any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,

 and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls;

 it tolls for thee."

This truth is seldom far from my mind.  Remembrance is in the very air you breathe if you drive the same road and walk the same earth and look at the same view through your windshield for decades at a time. 

 Barns fall down and families move away; trees die and fences are rolled up; farms change hands and farmers retire.  But the old times are near the surface and live as long as there are folks who remember around to talk about them.

When we moved to town in June 1980, right before Ann was born,  we lived just a block from Mrs. Florence Niedermeyer, mother to our family physician and grandmother to one of Blake's best friends from high school, Paul Niedermeyer.  Mrs. Niedermeyer was a gardener and was willing to suspend disbelief and accept me as a gardener too.  One of the plants she shared with me was a chunk of a peony root known as the Mother's Day peony, a scion of the plant carried over the plains...a pioneer, if you will.  When we moved out to the farm a few years later, I planted that peony in the front garden...and I think of Florence Niedermeyer every spring just before Mother's Day.

And that reminds me of Doc Niedermeyer himself.   Dr. Niedermeyer delivered our three babies ( and many many more!) and every Mother's Day week, weather permitting, he would drive his elegant antique roadster out to the greenhouse or call and order a fuchsia basket delivered to his home for Sue to hang in the kitchen window.  We did this for years, and then were privileged to pot up a long cedar planter to deliver to the cemetery after he was gone.

A year or so after we moved back to the farm, the family purchased an 80 acre farm owned previously by Floyd and Mary Parr. At the auction Blake bought a big console television...which never did work so we used it as a stand for our old TV, but for me the real treasure was Mary Parr's garden.  I had an empty slate to plan and plant at our new homestead and was never too proud to scavenge.  I made trip after trip with my spade, bringing home hostas and Virginia bluebells, a currant bush(a dreadful mistake) and a shrub rose with a tiny double pink bloom.  I dug two big chunks of old fashioned bleeding heart, a sentimental favorite from my childhood and several different peonies.  The whole process felt more like a rescue than a desecration as I built the backbone of my new garden from the treasures of a gardener I had never met.

I remember other gardeners, regular visitors to the greenhouse, by the flowers they loved.  Mrs. Barnard would make almost weekly visits to pick up one or two plants or just take a stroll to see what had changed since last week. She always had a friend or two with her during her outings.  She'd start out Easter weekend with pansies and follow up later with less hardy plants including the yellow sweet potato for the front light post.  I always hoped we had a good variety of herbs for Judy Munn when she and Rosalee came out for flowers.  Mary Lou Broerman planted lots of red geraniums and I was always afraid I'd run out before she got all she needed...Marnie Shaum needed lots of big dark red geraniums too. Those ladies were high in my estimation; I was a novice grower and salesman and I wanted them to be happy by having the right plants for their gardens.

Grandma Hurst would come get her flowers in her big red Crown Vic. She was done with vegetable gardening by the time I was around, but she had pretty pots and some perennials in front of the house after the big half dead evergreens were removed. We raised miniature roses for several years and Grandma really liked those.

Little Lee's first Easter; my dress from Grandma..

Not entirely put together..note the shoes!

 She would always buy us girls a new dress for Easter and a hybrid tea rose for Mother's Day.  I never have been very good with roses, I confess, having killed or let die uncounted victims.  But I still appreciate the gesture of one gardening generation to another, just as I remember fondly the women who treated an untested rookie gardener as their peer.....

"There's rosemary...that's for remembrance......and there is pansies, that's for thoughts"
(Shakespeare, from Hamlet)

Handiwork...or The Old Fashioned Way

Happy last week of April...a time of year that truly deserves special appellation on the calendar for those of us in the "seasonal"professions. Barring the types of abominations that bookend a bell curve of weather expectations, events like snow, a hard freeze, seven inches of rain...you get the idea.....this is the week machinery of all configurations typically crowds the fields and highways. With the first of May peeking out from under the next calendar page, trees in full flower and the whine of mowers a constant accompaniment, gardeners throw caution to the winds and clog the parking lots of garden centers and nurseries like bees in a hive.

But at the greenhouse, the mechanical helping hands that sped the job of transplanting and filling flats sit idle as the tide of spring brings a transition from planting and growing to picking up the flats of flowers, vegetables, and choosing the finished hanging baskets and mixed planters for customers in four states. There is always an element of art in the growing of plants; there are rules of thumb and seasons of experience we rely upon. But when push comes to shove, we cannot grow plants from our devices or our instruments or our rules and records, or even necessarily follow our hard won experience; we have to get out amongst 'em, feel what they feel, pick them up, turn them over. It's detail, it's habit, it's time consuming....and absolutely essential.

So much of this enterprise is handwork. Watering in is rule 1,

but tagging is a close second. A perfectly beautiful flat of flowers will be left behind like Cinderella from the ball without a tag.....and no one wants to guess whether that vine in the corner will grow to bear a 20 # pumpkin....or 2 dozen zucchini!

Whether our customers order one flat of this and two flats of that..or 256 flats of marigolds and 243 flats of mixed zinnias, they are all picked up and carried by hand, two by two, the most ancient and elemental means of transport. It is piecework and not the stuff of glory...and it is the grand accomplishment of every single day. Flat by flat, basket by basket, truck by truck,until the greenhouses get too hot to bear and the whiteboard calendar is bare.

I am reading a book about work right now, believe it or not, a book that deals with work from a Biblical viewpoint, work as a vocation, a calling. I am comforted and encouraged by this interpretation when I do the most menial of tasks during the day: bagging the trash, emptying the dishwasher, putting away the laundry.

 Even though these chores are replayed daily, hourly in households world wide and require no especial talent, still, it would be universally acknowledged that the world is a better place when work like this is done. According to Martin Luther, these homely commonplace jobs are as beautiful in the sight of the Almighty as any other service rendered to His glory.

 With this insight, the work of the farmer , the gardener, the carpenter, the truck driver, the plumber, the welder, all become holy offerings when performed with our whole energy and effort. The outcome may not suit us; there won't be a standing ovation; we may consider our work menial or pedestrian or ephemeral....but our goals should be our best...no less.

These are the thoughts I ponder as I fill the carts with petunias and marigolds, snapdragons and salvia. Common annuals, beautiful and fresh as spring this day on April, but gone with the season like the proverbial lilies of the field. Some days my job seems trivial compared to the weighty burdens of the mighty, but I trust it is an offering to grow beautiful plants using the raw materials God has provided and the blessing of day by day work, no matter how humble.

Posted with Blogsy