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mme_hardyWhen I was thirteen, in 1972, my family moved into my parents' penultimate house, and my first. I remember fragments of our first two houses, plus the houses we lived in for sabbaticals and summer classes, but when I dream, it's of the house we moved into when I was thirteen.
Our house had belonged to a biology professor (my dad was a mathematics professor); before that, it had been the farmhouse for a set of fields that became the surrounding suburb. The house came with grapes, strawberries, plums, apples, raspberries, asparagus, and plants I don't remember. I spent many springtimes sitting in a branch of an apple tree in bloom, reading and being happy. I will never forget the way that apple bark looks after rain. That tree is long dead, but it lives in my memory.
At 906 Abington Pike, I learned to prune, to weed (God, I hated weeding), to can, and to deadhead. I learned to can in the era when making jelly required three different boiling pots. One of paraffin (UK wax), one of boiling jelly, one of jelly glasses. I wasn't allowed to help with the paraffin; too dangerous. My roots are sunk deep in that soil. My father made the family bread; I got teased, in middle school and high school, because my sandwiches were the wrong shape, round instead of square.
I left, because I loathed Indiana and wanted to see the wider world. When I graduated from college, and my husband lived in staff housing, I began my own garden; I have been gardening myself since 1982. There are three gardens I count as my own: one in Massachusetts; one, a failure, in North Carolina; and one in California, which I dearly loved, and left only when my knees could no longer manage the terraces.
We are in our last house now, beside the sea. When we leave this one, we will either be dead or no longer able to care for ourselves. I am paying large amounts of money to have the land carved into my last garden. Right now I have European elders, a self-fertile Cox's Orange Pippin, and French strawberries, waiting in pots for their final home. In the kitchen, there is a sourdough; I've been making bread every two days, and need to stretch that to three. Every day I go out into the garden (currently pots on the deck) and water it and look out at the sea.
When I was a girl, I resented being an Earth sign; I wanted to be fire or air. As an old woman, I am comforted by bread, and earth, and growing things. Sourdough and strawberry starts and old roses make me feel safe in a very unsafe world.
Here I am, and here I stay, until I can no longer.
Our house had belonged to a biology professor (my dad was a mathematics professor); before that, it had been the farmhouse for a set of fields that became the surrounding suburb. The house came with grapes, strawberries, plums, apples, raspberries, asparagus, and plants I don't remember. I spent many springtimes sitting in a branch of an apple tree in bloom, reading and being happy. I will never forget the way that apple bark looks after rain. That tree is long dead, but it lives in my memory.
At 906 Abington Pike, I learned to prune, to weed (God, I hated weeding), to can, and to deadhead. I learned to can in the era when making jelly required three different boiling pots. One of paraffin (UK wax), one of boiling jelly, one of jelly glasses. I wasn't allowed to help with the paraffin; too dangerous. My roots are sunk deep in that soil. My father made the family bread; I got teased, in middle school and high school, because my sandwiches were the wrong shape, round instead of square.
I left, because I loathed Indiana and wanted to see the wider world. When I graduated from college, and my husband lived in staff housing, I began my own garden; I have been gardening myself since 1982. There are three gardens I count as my own: one in Massachusetts; one, a failure, in North Carolina; and one in California, which I dearly loved, and left only when my knees could no longer manage the terraces.
We are in our last house now, beside the sea. When we leave this one, we will either be dead or no longer able to care for ourselves. I am paying large amounts of money to have the land carved into my last garden. Right now I have European elders, a self-fertile Cox's Orange Pippin, and French strawberries, waiting in pots for their final home. In the kitchen, there is a sourdough; I've been making bread every two days, and need to stretch that to three. Every day I go out into the garden (currently pots on the deck) and water it and look out at the sea.
When I was a girl, I resented being an Earth sign; I wanted to be fire or air. As an old woman, I am comforted by bread, and earth, and growing things. Sourdough and strawberry starts and old roses make me feel safe in a very unsafe world.
Here I am, and here I stay, until I can no longer.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-08 05:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-08 10:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-08 12:40 pm (UTC)When I was a girl, I resented being an Earth sign; I wanted to be fire or air. As an old woman, I am comforted by bread, and earth, and growing things. Sourdough and strawberry starts and old roses make me feel safe in a very unsafe world.
Entirely same. Although I am not good at domesticity, but I'm still hoping I'll grow into it.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-08 05:27 pm (UTC)May it be a long and growing time.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-09 05:42 am (UTC)Nine