Before my daughter was born, I was big into Louisiana irises, daylilies and waterlilies. I had about 150 varieties of Louisiana irises. I used to take her out into the yard and around the ponds where they were planted, and tell her the cultivar's names. When she was a freshman in college, I was going to the Louisiana Iris convention and asked her if she'd like to go along...a little break, stay in a nice hotel, good food, etc. Although she didn't have much of an interest in gardens, we toured private and public gardens.

We came to a clump of red Louisianas and she said, "Is that
Ann Chowing?" I said, "Yes, it is." She said, "I can't believe I remember that." Well, it is a very striking iris, but she was less than three years old when I taught her the names of the irises. It wasn't like I made a great effort to tell her, but I was hybridizing them, and I took her out with me to check them, and as we walked along, I'd say,
"This one is Barbara Elaine Taylor, this is Mistis, this is
Ann Chowning, etc."

I don't know if she will ever love gardening, like I did, but some day she will inherit this place, and some of those irises are still here. I doubt she has interest in learning the names any more.

I immediately laughed when I read the title of your post, because the garden memory that came to mind is embarrassing for me, and although it happened several years ago we just talked about it a couple of nights ago. The year I planted my first vegetable garden (about 7 or 8 years ago) I had a very nice crop of tomatoes. One lovely tomato in particular had grown through the cyclone fence separating our yard from our neighbor's yard. Well, I didn't want to lose it, so one early morning, I leaned way over from the edge of the bed to the fence and put a couple of fingers through the large mesh (but not large enough to pull the tomato through) and picked the tomato, then thought I could work the tomato up to the top of the fence using fingers on both hands and eventually bring it over to my side of the fence. But my center or gravity was way off and what actually happened was that I couldn't move an inch - I couldn't straighten up at all and I didn't want to fall face down in the dirt, so I began calling for my husband to come and help me. But he was in the house getting breakfast ready and couldn't hear me. I called for several minutes and finally decided that he wasn't going to come and I would have to just fall and then get up. Just as I was going to do that, he finally opened the back door and saw the position I was in and asked what the he## I was doing. I snapped at him to just help me and I would tell him about it later. I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself for being so selfish that I would go to such lengths not to share the bounty. Have a good laugh on me, I deserve it.

Needless to say, now my neighbor and I share equally. If it grows on her side of the fence, it's hers. And we often pass vegetables over the fence if one of us plants something the other didn't.

On a more serious note, I have taught my 10 year old grandson as much about gardening as he will soak in. He loves it. Since he was 4 years old he has been helping me in the garden. He knows better than most adults in my circle what is a weed and what is a flower or vegetable. When he was in preschool I showed him how to harvest seeds from many plants and one day he brought tears to my eyes when he came home with some large 4 o'clock seeds and asked if we could plant them. He said he got them by the door of his preschool - plucked them out of their little nests on the plant. Of course we planted them, how could I not?

I do most of my gardening in raised beds and there is often at least one bed with nothing growing in it because the season for whatever was there is over. And he loves to dig and I take advantage of that. He would visit and ask if he could dig. I would point him to that empty bed and hand him his very own shovel that was just his size and he would dig in that bed until it was loose and ready. Then, when he went home I would plant in the bed. The next time he visited, there would be another spot for him to dig in. Is that called "symbiosis"?

And now, my 2 year old grandson has discovered that digging is fun, so we're going to start gardening together, too.

Oh memories... My gramdma Jones always loved to garden. We always had a huge garden with her. All the grandkids helped her. She called it her truck patch.. Lots of yummy stuff came from that garden. Grandma died a week after I got married and I wasn't into flowers then. But now I am and my mom had a sweetpea vine that came from my grandma. I have one from her. It is so pretty in the summer. I think of her every summer when it blooms. I also have a wisteria vine that came from my mom. I can't tell you how much these 2 flowers mean to me.

I have tons of flowers and I have already shared with my girls.. They both share with others when they need divided. They both have gardens and I have given them all my canning gear. They both can tons of stuff and share it with us. We planted 17 fruit trees some years ago and they come pick and share with mom and dad. Maling wonderful memories... To be able to think back when I was doing all this as a kid makes me remember all the good times..

Susie

Growing up we didn't have a tiller, it might have been before they were invented :). My Dad fixed our push cultivator with a single tree and I would ride my pony up and down the rows and he would guide the cultivator. I have had many, many gardens since that time and now I have a Troy Built Super Bronco to till with if I want, from one kind of horse to another kind. All my daughters like gardening, but not my son.

Sue

You can never have too many plants,flowers,love all gardening good for your soul.

This is so timely. One Easter we invited a friend who was a new widow, to share Easter dinner with us. She brought us a pot of Tom Thumb daffodils. I planted them after they finished blooming, and we had them in our NY garden for several years. When we moved, I dug up all the bulbs I could find, also the blue iris rhizomes she had given us, and brought them with us to Texas. When we moved from town to the farm, yup, they came with us again, and are blooming now. Every time I see those flowers, I think of Mary Jane (and even when I don't see the flowers, I think of her).

Mother wasn't a gardener, but Dr Davis, our preacher's home backed up to my parents chain link fence. He was a rose gardener.

You would always see him, out in his garden, pruning the roses, with his straw hat on.

My grandmother's home in Evanston had a huge hedge of lilacs separating the yard from the alley. Those lilac bushes must have been 12 to 15 feet tall--white, purple and raspberry colored. Across the back side yard was a fence with concord grapes growing on it.

My mother had peonies growing all around the yard, and irises, narcissus, lily of the valley too. The side of the house was covered with 6 feet tall bridal wreath shrubs, and the very back of the yard was planted with red and black raspberries. We had absolutely huge bouquets of peonies every summer, and they were gorgeous in a vase. The neighbors had a lovely forsythia next to our fence and a big cherry tree which we all loved to climb and eat the fruit.

I would love to grow peonies, but they need a cold winter, and we don't have them. Ditto the black raspberries.

we would plant a very large vegetable garden every year since there were 10 of us kids and my mother did a lot of canning. One memory that sticks out in my mind is one summer we were weeding the garden and I was on my hands and knees and after a couple of hours I had a nice really red sunburn on my lower back where my shirt had rode up. Boy did that hurt. Now I live in a town that had very bad water so the soil is ruined and besides that I dont have outside water so I dont do any gardening now but have thought of starting to do container gardening.

I love to remember the roses, forget-me-nots, allysum trilliums and the dogwood trees that my mom planted when we were growing up. We just had a small garden but I loved it. Sure wish I had pictures.

The gardening memory that really gets me is my lovely wisteria bush. We have moved since, but in our old house, I had planted a wisteria twig and watched it grow into a gorgeous beautiful plant growing along our wooden fence. It took 7 years to bloom, as they all do but the blooms certainly were worth waiting for and it bloomed for quite a few years. I would anticipate it's bloom each Spring. I had just planted some plants alongside the wisteria a couple of days earlier, and we went to visit my mother-in-law for the day. When we came home, we saw that my "charming" neighbour had cut down my wisteria bush to the ground leaving it strewn all across our backyard and trampled all of the new plants I had planted. When my DH went to talk to him about it he told DH it was his problem and gave him a wisecrack answer. I never spoke to my neighbour again and actually he is lucky because I should have called the police and had him charged for destroying my property. We moved that winter since the joy of my house was no longer there. A friend of mine now has wisteria so I can get my wisteria fix each Spring.

I did get sweet revenge....the wisteria bush had lots of trailers and is thriving to this day. It really is hard to kill wisteria and when I drove past a couple of years later, I saw that it had grown with a vengence!

My memory is making this gate 15 years ago, to keep the deer out of my roses! :0) The gate is made from electrical conduit, the finials on top are curtain finials. That used to be an eden climber on the right, it's now a Dr. Huey. :0) I remember the "BEAUTIFUL" BIG pink flower heads hanging amidst the purple clematis blooms.

Mama and Daddy always had my DB and me "help" with the gardening. One day, Ronnie, my DB, was out there in the garden, barefooted, no less, and he was covering seeds with his foot, not even bending over, just shoving the dirt with his barefoot. Daddy's immortal words to him? "Dammit, Ronnie!! You can't garden with your feet!" LOL We still quote that one around my mom's house.

Mama still laughs about how we'd get out there in the spring and Ronnie would start gripin', "Every time we get out here in the garden all that goes by on the road are vehivles pullin' boats, going fishin'!? LOL

The other one? We (my DB and I) were sent out to plant corn. We started out pretty good and then we started just throwing massive amounts of corn in each hole. When it came up there would be a corn plant, corn plant, six corn plants, one corn plant, four corn plants, etc.! LOL

I grow roses. Lots of them. Back in 1999 I began "collecting" mini roses since we did not have a yard but a large patio. I would spend hours out there pulling little weeds, watering and just loving the little blooms. Each pot of course had the name tag for each rose. My middle child came out to help me and said "I will clean the pots with you Mama!" And he did. Pulled out every single tag. Bless his heart. Then the deer found us and I never saw a rose bloom again. They always managed to nip them just as they started to show color. We ended up moving to Bakersfield where I grew over 400 roses in pots. Big pots! Whew, talk about a lot of watering. But I loved it. I wound up with a back surgery that pulled me out of the garden for about 8 months. My kids did all the work along with DH. All I could do was stand there and admire. Then we moved again! This time across country. I sent over 100 plants to my new job and seven years later I have at least 90 of them still. What thrills me now is to see my youngest. He is 18 now, but last fall he helped to plant close to 200 roses in our new beds and he walks those beds every single day. We are gearing up to go out and do some spring cleaning in about 2 weeks now.

Trish in SC

One day my mother thought my brothers were awfully quiet, so she went looking for them.

She found them in the garden, tossing handfuls of seed into the air.

"Boys, *what* are you doing?"

"plantin'!" they replied, still slinging seeds everywhere.

"What are you planting?"

"Chow-Chow!"

(it's a Southern kind of relish.)