Why Is a Garden Like a Handwritten Letter?
Celebrate Earth Day by writing your Congressmen - Tuesday, April 22
I’ve been unpacking cardboard boxes full of family papers, photos and other things. In the end, even if I could take everything “with me” I wouldn’t, because it’s time for the newer generations in my family to discover their family roots.
Some of the letters have postmarked envelopes. On January 25, 1919, my 10-year-old father wrote a letter in pencil to his grandmother in Cuayahoga Falls, Ohio. He said,
How are you? I am sick with the flu but not bad. I am going downstairs this P. M. … Robert and Philip and daddy brought Spike, the dog, up to see me last night. The boys play nicely out doors nowadays. I hope you could come soon. P. S. nobody else has the flu. Lovingly, Richard
At the bottom in blue ink his mother added,
Richard has had a very light case of the flue. He was in bed three days & we have kept him in his room the rest of a week - to keep the family from getting it & keep him from getting any cough. … A Britton girl (14 yrs) died yesterday.
Many years later, Richard wrote to his mother, my grandmother, asking her for details about the family homestead garden. He included a sketch he made of the plants, paths and buildings that he remembered.
She replied,
At top of page your row of cherries should come out near the chicken coop & go back farther. Also asp. [asparagus] bed went back twice as far.
His finished watercolor measures 9 by 12 inches:
In my boxes I also found photos of two different houses. I think the one below fits my father’s garden diagram best.
In the early 2000’s I made a drawing like his, of our own garden in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
I have very few handwritten letters written after 2000. But luckily I still have in my computer an email from 2015 that I had sent to a gardener from a more recent generation in our family. It begins,
Thank you for the wonderful closeups of the Cuphea Bat Face flower, a new one for us. Spring delights are endless!
My email goes on,
I just finished scattering in the meadow a few thousand (million?) seeds from dried flower heads I'd cut and saved in small paper bags. Earlier today we dug big grass clumps out from there and scattered flower seeds in the bare spots.
Then, at the pollen-covered pond and in the woods nearby, we flagged some native azaleas before the blooms disappear so that we can gather their seeds in October.
You may recall that the foxgloves we planted last year perished over the winter. Imagine our surprise to find one blooming this week 8 yards away from that spot!
Now it’s April, the most exuberant of seasons. I’m celebrating Spring, but I also praise the handwritten letter. Gardens and letters both have precious continuity — the one from year to year, the other through generations of family and friends.
When I found my father’s letter and read that he had “a very light case of the flue” in 1919, I could feel his mother’s alarm, because it reminded me of the many deaths around us during first months of COVID in 2020.
And today along the woods path near our house in town, I came upon two trilliums blooming in perfect green and white. It stuns me that many people in charge don’t care about protecting the Earth that supports our spirits and our very lives.
Save the date, save the planet —
I started my day with your lovely post. Thank you.
Love this so much! My grandfather (the nice one) was a gardener; he was a Roosevelt Dem and even after the war he kept up his Victory Garden. I will never forget his flower bed. I can still see it--not the details or even the species of flowers, just the overwhelming beauty of it. He had a pipe vine growing on a lattice on one end of his porch and he would have us hunt for the pipes. This year, after many unsucessful years of trying, I have a pipe vine happily growing on one end of my porch. My other grandfather was not quite as nice and was a successful business person. So, I am a Dem gardener. Thanks for this post which let me think about this. I have always thought that T and his crew represented the worst aspects of the American character and values. I choose the kinder, fairer aspects. This all makes me smile.