On Sparrows and Freedom in Simplicity

"I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn." -Henry David Thoreau

I think part of what Thoreau is saying here is that he experienced the delight of having a sparrow land on his shoulder because he was found in a place for such a thing to be possible. Tending that garden gave him the posture for such a simple, yet undiluted experience. And, he was proud about it.

There is something to the pleasure one who gardens knows about. It is a place where quiet, hard work is had, where abundant dirt is a great thing. A garden is a place where one can harvest the product of the work and time put into it and be proud for its tangible reward. A garden is a place where you don't matter, but what you do (or don't do) does. Is there anything more genuine?

I'm newer to this in the last five to ten years, as you'll see in this post and the ones to follow about gardening. I grew up in a bustling Southern city capitol where what we grew was flowers in our front yards to make our houses look pretty from the outside. And, they did. Little Rock is beautiful in that way to me. However, I have dirt in my genes. My mom grew up on a farm in southeast Arkansas. She's the real farm girl. I am just her offspring and I'm Southern and being so, even if we're not personally into stuff like gardening, we Southerners can still appreciate a good watermelon or a vine-ripe tomato. Who's with me?

Inspiration to garden came in early childhood when my Mom would take us to a family friend's farm to see how she grew up. We did chores and were showed around, in her eyes I think, to appreciate things. We might not have fully understood then what she was trying to do, but I appreciate it now. One of my mom's favorite stories is of me being at that farm climbing the tractor when no one was looking, starting it (even with a clutch) and trampling a good acre of beautiful beans before Mr. Farmer hopped up the moving tractor to save me. I was three-years-old. My second source of inspiration came through my marriage from what I'd say was an unlikely source. One of mine and the hub's first few times to hang-out just the two of us, was at a Thanksgiving-potluck-church-social at his grandparent's modest, country Baptist church. The pastor's name is Charlie Brown, I kid you not. We sat in pews, crawling over canes to get to our seats, and we sang old country hymns and there was harmony all around me like popcorn popping. I didn't know whether to sing or listen. I guess I did a little of both.

After the service, Army Grandpa and I immediately connected through his stories from fighting in France in World War II. I'd like to have never left that table. His Alzheimer's had already begun to set in even then, although no one else in his family seemed to really pick up on it or talk about it. The study of Alzheimer's was part of my major in college so I immediately noticed that he kept repeating his war stories with vivid detail, like it was yesterday, but couldn't at all remember what sweet potatoes were called to tell me to pass them down the table.

Alzheimer's truly is cruel. In Grandpa's case, his body was strong as an ox, especially for a man in his early 80's, when he died. He mowed, worked in the yard, and gardened until the very end. Christian and his sister were exposed as toddlers to his grandparent's way of life. They worked hard, had big family suppers, went regularly to church and they found many new things unnecessary. Case in point, after Grandma died, there were brand new appliances, probably from the late 80's and early 90's that had been given to her as gifts, hidden at the top of her closet. She never opened them because her old one worked just fine. We had people come back to the estate sale we had after she died to give us the $20 she'd hidden under the cotton-liner in the lapel pin box. If she sat in the wing back chair Christian's parents had given her, she prayed in it first. She called her new chair her "prayer chair." There is SO MUCH my indulgent, impatient, drunk on newness generation can learn from theirs. So much.

Anyway, Grandpa had a green thumb. He grew just about anything and everything. His plants were fertilized with real manure. His rows were unmarked because he just remembered where stuff was, at least back then. He'd point and sort of in a slurrish Southern way say, "Beans'll be here. Cantaloupe, there. Cucumbers, there." All I saw was rows of dirt. But, he'd always take me out back and show me his garden when we came by. It was sweet. He always made time for me no matter what was going on and he knew I cared and I felt special when he did that and I loved it. I think he liked me because I didn't have to always be talking about something like I knew what I was saying when I was there. Sometimes, I would just sit there and listen, especially when the extended family came. Now, they are talkers.

His Merit corn was the sweetest I've ever tasted. In fact, every July, when the corn was ready, whoever could would come out and "put up" the corn. This entailed shucking it, cutting the ends off, silking it, dunking it in a bucket of water to de-worm it and cutting off that sweet hot corn right into quart-sized freezer bags ready to eat straight from the freezer with salt, pepper and butter after a quick thaw. But, even if the corn was all cut off, you still weren't done, as Grandma told me, until you took the back of your knife and ran it down the ear of the corn, scraping off all that natural juice into the bag. It was delicious corn.

They really did mean a lot to me and I learned a lot from them from gardening to cooking to what really matters in life. I really only had one grandparent, my Grandmother Milton, and she died when I was nine. My great grandparents, Mama and Daddy Hambrick, I remember, but they died when I was even younger than that and I don't remember having much of a relationship with them like I did with Christian's grandparents. More so, I remember what Mama and Daddy Hambrick smelled like. And, their house too. Oh, and their curly toenails.

When Grandma was living and when Christian would have to go out of town for work before we had kids, she'd invite me to have a bunkin' party with her. And, I would. I usually read myself to sleep at an hour way earlier than normal, and before I knew it, she'd get me up at the crack of dawn and teach me how to make cinnamon rolls from scratch and coffee in a percolator. I'd hear the door creak open and her sweet little voice, "Lizbuth, honey, ... it's time to get up."

Although mine and Christian's family's share some core similarities such as being middle class, raised in church, conservative-ish social values and love of the Arkansas Razorbacks, I found myself getting along best not with his immediate family that was most like me in circumstance. I got along best with the blue-collar, Arkansas side. Namely, his grandparents. And, I miss them dearly.

I am often grateful to have been put in a place to have met them.

I'm excited. I have started my own garden with the help and green thumb of Army Grandpa's grandson and while 15x5, it's definitely not an Army Grandpa garden. It is my first go 'round and I'll be back later to tell y'all more about it. I'll even add some pictures too. Until then.