It's Fall Planting Time!!

Ok, next to summer...my absolute most favorite time of year, comes spring and fall planting. I have mentioned before my love of flowers...I get this from 4 very key people in my life.

1st I grow tomatoes and peppers in my garden as my Grampie did when I was a girl. Grampie was full blooded Italian, and as a good Italian protoge I dutifully followed him around the garden all summer. I weeded, I talked, and I ATE TOMATOES! It took me 16 years of my adult life to start my own garden and find that peace I felt as a child wandering Grampies plants. So, now, I grow tomatoes OUT MY &%! and can them for the fam.

2nd When I wasnt wandering the tomato "fields" (it was a big garden to a small child) with Grampie, I was tottering about in Mema's flower beds. I spent MANY a summer afternoon, learning which to pull as weed, and which to leave as flower. This is undoubtedly where my love for "wildflowers" was born. Mema had no rhyme or reason in her flower beds...lilys, peonie, daisies, sweet william, irises, cannas, daffodils, you name it, it was in there somewhere.

3rd My dad was a houseplant FREAK when I was a kid. Our old house had a porch with these open beams, and at one time, there must have been dozens of ferns, spiderplants, etc hanging from these beams. My dad was the one who taught me that the big beautiful flowering plants at places like Worlds of Fun and Silver Dollar City, were there for me to "pull starts". I still have the last start he "pulled".

4th My mother was a little bit of all three of the above. For a time we resided in the "country" complete with the garden from HELL! Complete with pear, peach, apple, and cherry trees, our garden had green beans, green beans, and green beans. No, I do not grow green beans. She also had houseplants all over our house, and of course flower beds along the front or sides of any house we lived in.

So what does this mean about me? I am an eclectic mix of these green thumbs. The front of my house in the summer looks like a flower nursery, my backyard looks like a farm, the inside looks like BOTH! hahaha!

What flowers and plants do for me is show me that beauty is so simple. When I am in my garden, I am free to think, and relax. Sometimes I think about simple things...grocery lists, doctor appointments...etc. Sometimes I think about the people that gardening reminds me of. Mostly, I just get my hands dirty for awhile, and stand up to admire my and God's handiwork. I feel earthy, womanly, and thankful for the time to just muse.

That brings us to this weekend...guess what Emily and Mom are doing Sunday after Homecoming dress shopping? Something we have done since she was in a baby carrier under a shade tree. We are going to plant. Then in the Spring, she and I will watch in amazement as those bulbs take the form of a flower. Nothing is deeper, or more rewarding to me than sharing my love of nature with my baby girl...knowing that my dad, grampie, and mema are influencing her and her children someday as they did me.