Reflections on Gardening
Hollyhocks and Four
O’Clocks: Gram’s Legacy
By Debbie Sumner, Penn State Master Gardener,
Warren County
It’s
funny how I relate my happy early years to the delightful hours spent in my
Gram’s small yard and garden in Erie, PA.
Today
I so much enjoy collecting the seeds from my bright yellow Four O’Clocks
that cheerfully return to delight me every summer with their sunny blossoms.
Because this flower successfully reseeds itself every year, I don’t know why
I continue to reap the seeds, other than the fact that it takes me back to
fond childhood memories. I remember being 4 or 5 years old, in that
comfortable place and time long before adult worries and cares when, sitting
on the warm sandy ground, my Gram showed me how to carefully gather mature
seeds from these plants.
Seeing hollyhocks also take me back to the wonderful times in that garden,
as well as climbing roses, cannas and the beds of other colorful flowers
with unfamiliar and strange names to a young girl. I recall with some
trepidation that nasty pampas grass. For whatever unknown reason, kids just
insisted on handling those razor sharp blades of tall ornamental grass. I
remember constantly having cuts on my fingers during the summer season.
That was, without a doubt, my least favorite plant in Gram’s yard.
And
then there were the trees: I have memories of beautiful huge pink and white
blossoms of her precious magnolia in the spring and a wonderful apple tree
that God put there specifically for grandchildren’s eating pleasure in late
summer and climbing pleasure any time of the year. There was my favorite, a
peach tree that made you all sticky and yucky without even touching it
(honest!). I clearly recall that Mom never really understood the
complicated and little-known scientific theory behind the flying peach sap
that mysteriously relocated itself from the tree trunk onto small children’s
clean clothes. Besides the loads of thick sap, this tree also produced the
most wonderful sweet and drippy delicious fruit. This thought then triggers
the memory of soft fuzz on the outside of the fruits’ delicate skin causing
terribly itchy eyes when somehow grandchildren transferred it from peach to
eyes.
What
comfortable, contented memories! Ahh, to be so contented and carefree
again…
