Spring Has Sprung For Mother’s Day - Dave’s Midwestern Ohio Memories

A Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s.

Spring Has Sprung For Mother’s Day

Nice day today so I took a walk around the neighborhood and noticed some phloxing that was in full bloom at a neighbor’s home. It was just a small patch; nothing compared to the extensive bed my mother-in-law has in her front yard as shown in the above photo. Unfortunately, several years ago, her yard maintenance company sprayed on a windy day, which somewhat stunted the blooms ever since. Back in the day, chemicals were never used on any of my Mom’s gardens as she had us kids to pull the weeds and plenty of fertilizer from the farm. I guess that meant she was an organic gardener using today’s vernacular.

Mom's garden was located between the garage, smoke house and chicken coop (a great source for that "organic" fertilizer) on a large plot that would yield enough food for our family of seven during the entire year. Right when my mind was totally focused on baseball, my Mom’s thoughts were instead on us helping plant her garden. And you know who won that battle! She would have us prepare the soil for planting rows and rows of vegetables in the garden and tons of flowers in the beds around the house. And most were all planted from seeds, not seedlings, so that meant the ground had to be prepared and seeds planted early in the spring so everything would sprout just after the last freeze was supposed to occur. That plan didn’t always work out as I recall many times covering plants with old sheets when jack frost was forecasted.

All winter long, Mom would scan through the mail order seed catalogs and order the latest flower and vegetable varieties. Plus she would harvest some seeds from her dried flowers grown the prior year. And for potatoes, she would cut up spuds that were stored in our basement all winter. Each piece had to have a small sprout that would be planted, take root, and yield a new potato plant. She also had a large strawberry patch that we had to spread sawdust around all the plants each spring to control the weeds and to keep the strawberries from touching dirt. The strawberries would be sold to the local markets each summer to provide her with some much needed spending money. And it was all pure profit, because her labor force of me and my siblings were paid nada. On second thought, we did get an allowance of $1.25 a week. Considering we worked what seemed like 60 hours a week during strawberry picking season, it came to a about 2 cents an hour. No need for a UPick’EM sign at our farm!

But the effort was all worth it at dinner time after the fruits and veggies were harvested throughout the summer. Plus she always had a vase of cut flowers from her garden that were beautiful. For example, Mom had one special old rose bush that seemed to bloom all summer long. The photo below shows her on Mothers Day about 30 years ago with a vase of roses from that old rose bush and in the background, are our cards she received along with a paint-by-number painting of da Vinci's Last Supper completed by her father a year or so before he died. After my Mother passed away in 2003, I recall cutting off a growth from the old rose and planting it at her gravestone, but it never took or the cemetery workers removed it. So in honor of Mother’s day and in her memory, this nice video about an English County Garden is included for all you gardeners out there to enjoy. 

Happy Mother’s Day to all the wonderful mothers who read the Fish Report.