By Alice Rush
IN MY American mind, the land around a home in the United States is a yard, not a garden. I got a real kick out of hearing a Dutch friend of ours, who was staying with us in Maryland, talk about how much she enjoyed sitting outside in our “garden”. I wondered what on earth she was talking about that she could consider the basic grassy yard in a suburban neighborhood to be a garden.
When I was growing up my father kept what I call a garden. He kept a vegetable patch, several in fact, and when I was very young I wasn’t allowed in them because I would potentially step on the small plants that he intended for our table. We lived very rural,on 6 acres that were partially wooded, so there was no need to keep a meticulously maintained yard. At some point when my parents first built the the house and settled in, my mother had planted bulbs in the front, and I remember irises and daffodils in flower beds on either side of the front door. The real GARDEN though, was where my father grew vegetables.
So even today, when I’m watching a British television program and they mention that word, or I hear one of our Dutch friends mention it, I still get an image of my father’s vegetables or a beautiful English flower patch, not the typical American yard with its lush green grass, free of dandelions and all planted areas carefully mulched and maintained.
SPRING IS on the way, and it makes me think of my own back yard, and the vegetables that I want to grow this year. I don’t harvest nearly as much as my father did, but I have fun playing around and trying new seeds and methods. My hydroponic tower garden is nearly always a pest-free joy to work with. Also, I always have to check out the new flowers in the local hot houses and ultimately buy something new every season for a different area around the house. Someday I would really like to be surrounded by carefully plotted sections of flowers and vegetables, but it all takes time. With the exception of biting insects, I like working in the yard, and I’m slowly turning it into something special, so that someday I can just enjoy sitting in my garden. In Maine, I’ll also be swatting mosquitoes.
* Alice is a Maine realtor and a licensed helicopter and fixed wing pilot. She first met her Dutch husband in Maryland in 2005, and married him four years later.
