Tag: Grandma

My Family Garden

Brenda Stratton

I live in the home I inherited from my parents. It’s not my childhood home, but one they purchased just before Carl and I were married. 

After we were married, Carl and I made my childhood home our own for the next 32 years.

Mom and Dad both loved flowers, and they each put their mark on this yard.

Dad planted daffodils, a lilac bush, ghost lilies, roses, and peonies. He transplanted my maternal grandmother’s rosebush from my childhood home to where I live now.

Mom always loved hollyhocks, tulips, and clematis, which she planted on the south side of the house.

Over the years, I’ve added my own touches to the garden with more roses and peonies, hydrangeas, irises, two magnolia trees, and an ornamental cherry tree.

Not every flower has survived. This year I planted two light purple clematis vines where Mom’s dark purple one had grown for years.

It had been struggling for the last two or three years, and I don’t remember seeing it at all last year. I thought it was gone.

To my surprise, this spring the old vine returned. Now the dark purple and light purple blossoms are intertwined, climbing the trellis together.

On my list of flowers yet to replace are a new lilac bush, tulips and hollyhocks. 

The flowers made me think about my family and the things we leave behind.

Each generation adds something new to what was already there. New family members are added through marriage, birth, and sometimes adoption.

Just as I continue adding new flowers to the garden, each generation adds something new to our family.

It is a continuous cycle of life.

When I look at the flowers in my yard, they remind me of the people who planted them.

Dad is in the daffodils, peonies, ghost lilies, and roses. Mom smiles from the clematis, and Grandma still blooms in the old rosebush. 

They remind me that those who loved us are never truly gone. 

You’ve Got Mail!

Brenda Stratton

When I was a little girl, my paternal grandmother used to send me things in the mail.

Sometimes, she tucked a piece of chewing gum into a letter that she wrote to my mom.

Several times, she sent me handkerchiefs that she crocheted pretty edgings on. I still have all eight of them.

It was always something flat that would fit neatly into an envelope so it would go through the mail for the standard price of a three-cent postage stamp. (I can still remember the displeasure my mother voiced when the price went up to four cents!)

It doesn’t seem like much by today’s standards to get a piece of gum in the mail. But at five years old, receiving an unexpected treat in the mailbox meant my Grandma was thinking of me.

Now, as an adult — and someone who made a career out of being a fiber artist — I can fully appreciate the time and care it took to crochet the edgings on those handkerchiefs and to knit the many pairs of slippers she made for me one Christmas long ago.