Apr 14: 🌱 Generations in the Garden
How family roots grow deep in the soil.
The Spiritual Almanac is a weekly, free email newsletter based on the calendar that explores spiritual practices and mindfulness for modern living. Join here:
Apr 14: National Gardening Day
To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.
—Audrey Hepburn
I come from a family of gardeners, raised in the middle of my Granny's Victory garden.
My father taught me how to remove tomato grubs without using poison before organic was a word.
Looking back, I can see how the people in my life had a particular plant they found endearing. So today, in honor of National Gardening Day, here are those plants and what I learned from them.
Granny's Heavenly Hydrangeas
Hydrangeas are the fairytale flowers of the garden. With their big, showy blooms and delicate shades of pink, blue, and white, they resemble something out of a dream. —Unknown
My grandmother, Mary Evelyn, whom we called Granny, loved her colorful hydrangeas. She lined her little yellow house with them, each bush bursting like pom-poms dipped in a rainbow.
I would find her on her knees, packing tea bags, egg shells, and coffee grinds into the soil to make the most brilliant colors no one else could produce.
Some hydrangeas even bore a whimsical gradient, their color deepening from a blush pink at the center to a vibrant fuchsia at the edges.
The word "hydrangea" is derived from the Greek words "hydro," meaning water, and "angeion," meaning vessel, referring to the water jug shape of its seed pods.
The name is fitting, as hydrangeas are often found in areas with high humidity and moisture levels.
Granny's Memphis hydrangeas must have loved the Mississippi River's steamy breath, which you could see hovering in the air, making it difficult to breathe in the heat of summer.
One thing we didn't know as children is that hydrangeas contain low levels of cyanide, which makes them highly poisonous. Luckily, we never decorated our mud pies with them!
Blue hydrangeas are supposed to be the luckiest, but if you plant them too close to your front door, your daughters will never marry. Interestingly, this came true for Granny's only daughter, our beloved Aunt Be, which was OK since she doted all her love on us, and we didn't have to share.
Pappy’s Tomatoes
Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love and homegrown tomatoes.
—John Denver
My father had a deep love for growing tomatoes. He would plant rows of tomato plants every year in our backyard garden.
Every day, when he arrived home from work, he headed out to his tomatoes, watering them, nurturing them to round ripeness, picking them at the perfect time.
Unfortunately, I didn't care for tomatoes, which my father never understood. He tried to get me to eat them repeatedly, but I refused every time.
He always said, "I've never known anyone not to like tomatoes."
Maybe I had a little leftover European fear from my ancestors, who believed tomatoes were poisonous and blamed them for witchcraft and werewolves.
At my father’s funeral celebration, we placed a tomato plant on every table, encouraging people to take one home and plant it in his honor. He would have loved that.
He would also love that I now like tomatoes. It took me a while, but I finally acquired a taste for them. Now, I understand why he was so passionate about growing them, as I tend my own tomatoes using my father's guidance and master tips.
Aunt Be's African Violets
Do you think amethysts can be the souls of good violets?
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
Sitting on the windowsill like little princesses wearing Easter bonnets, Aunt Be's delicate African Violets added a whimsical charm to our Granny's back porch.
Aunt Be wouldn’t let us touch them, adding mystery to their allure as our eyes soaked in the deep purples, pale pinks, and soft blues. They each sat in their own trays filled with the perfect amount of water, their faces protected by the direct sun.
When Walter von Saint-Paul-Illaire walked among the rocks and trees deep in the Usambara mountains of East Africa in 1892, he noticed a small plant with stunning blue flowers.
Excited about his discovery, Walter collected the seeds and sent them to his friend Hermann Wendland, a famous botanist in Germany. Hermann was amazed by the plant and gave it a special name, Saintpaulia ionantha, in honor of Walter.
Saintpaulia, now known as African violets, became popular in the 1930s and 40s when the fluorescent light was invented. Aunt Be never owned a fluorescent light bulb, but she grew these beautiful flowers like a professional gardener.
But African violets were not just admired for their beauty; they also held deep spiritual meaning.
In Victorian times, these flowers symbolized faithfulness and devotion, making them a perfect gift for loved ones. They were also believed to have healing properties, particularly in matters of the heart, and bring good luck to those who grew them.
They touched our hearts and brought us joy during Aunt Be's life. And even after she passed away, her African violets continued to bloom, a reminder of her love and presence in our lives.
Cultivating Miracles
Gardener Janet Kilburn-Phillips said, "Why try to explain miracles to your children when you can have them plant a garden?"
❇️ Seeing Granny's hydrangeas, with their breathtaking shades of blue, was a miracle.
❇️ The aroma of summer from Pappy's tomatoes was a miracle.
❇️ Aunt Be's African violets' delicate fairy-like purple blooms were a miracle.
The entire gardening process is a miracle. It's unfathomable how a tiny seed sprouts into a vibrant plant with fruits or flowers, providing us with sustenance and beauty.
But the greatest miracle of gardening is the bond it creates between generations. Sharing the love of gardening, passing down knowledge, and making memories are the experiences that bring joy to both the heart and soul.
This Week’s Inspiration: Growing Things: A Film Lesson in "Nature Study" (1928)
Watch this rare, silent, black-and-white 1928 film about planting and maintaining a small garden. You will enjoy the simple inter-title instructions, and the footage is incredible, showing how people gardened in the early 20th century.
It also shows a captivating time-lapse vision of a bean seed's miraculous transformation into a plant, considered a groundbreaking technique at the time. Enjoy!
Do you have childhood memories of gardening with your ancestors? What plants did you learn to grow? Share your stories in the comments section.
In every gardener there is a child who believes in The Seed Fairy. —Robert Brault
I absolutely love hydrangeas. There were outside the hotel where we got married and we had one in our garden the same colour, although it never quite flourished the same.