Thursday, May 03, 2007

Cannas, Memories of Mother

My Mother always grew a large vegetable garden. She grew and preserved huge quantities of food for the family. Mom loved to plant the little seeds and watch her garden grow. She grew green beans, sweet corn, beets, cabbage, broccoli sweet potatoes, squash, strawberries, lima beans, peas, tomatoes, and potatoes. She enjoyed shopping from the seed catalogues and was always trying new varieties. Even though she grew a large veggie garden she always found room to have flowers in it. She tended these with the same loving care that she gave her food bearing vegetable plants. Looking back I am sure that her flowers were food as well, food for her soul.



I learned my love of gardening from her. As a child I spent many hours with her in the garden and in helping her with the canning and freezing. During the summer it seemed she always had baskets of food from her garden sitting in the kitchen awaiting processing.




One of the flowers Mom planted in her garden was Cannas. She admired the large plants with their beautiful foliage.




Cancer took Mom from us nearly seven years ago. Mom was many things to me, my mother, my teacher, my mentor, my friend. She is gone but her memories and her Cannas remain.




Each spring I plant her Canna bulbs across the north end of my garden. As I plant them the memories of her come flooding back. Each time I look at the garden the sight of the Cannas reminds me of a most wonderful loving caring person.

7 comments:

Ed U. Cayshun said...

What a great blog entry! As a father I hope to instill the same types of feelings in my children. What makes it better is that she just did without the hope that someday you'd remember her lovingly in a blog entry!

Thank God for great parents!

Ed U. Cayshun
http://educayshun.blogspot.com/

Chad Oneil Myers said...

Very nice post about your Mom.

photowannabe said...

A tender and sweet tribute to your Mom. I appreciate your sharing it with us.

lv2scpbk said...

Sounds like you had a wonderful mom and good memories. I used to plant alot years ago, now I have a small garden.

JAM said...

A lovely tribute to her, and to see her cannas every year too.

Bill said...

Tried a garden once, and got laughed at while using a yeard stick to make sure the seeds were 18" apart....too much of a geek I guess :)

Lost my Mom to cancer last October. Yesterday I was helping my Dad clean up their email system. Many memories......

Doro said...

What a lovely means of remembrance and rewarding in the late summer/fall too.