Lakeland Local

My friend, Raven, and I love to share stories- the whole story. We’re good at warning each other when it’s going to be a long one by saying, “OK, I’m gonna take you all the way to Grandma’s house on this one.” So in honor of Grandparents Day, please allow me to take you all the way to Grandma’s house:

It’s amazing to me how you can hear an old song and be thrown back in time to when you were five years old, riding in your mom’s Dodge Challenger on the way to school.

Well, it happened recently with a smell. Mike and I are big-time into gardening these days and I’m all nerdy about trying to do everything organically and how do I attract the good bugs? that will annihilate the bad bugs? and so on. Well, spearmint is good for something. It’s low-lying, so it provides shelter for some good bug whose name and reason for being classified a good bug currently escapes me.

I bought the spearmint plant from the produce section in Publix (my favorite grocery store in the world) and when I picked it up and smelled it, I swear to you, it was as if I had been transported back in time, y’all! Instantly, I was outside my grandparents house in Cottondale, Fla. and my Grandma and I were working in her flowerbed. I could remember like it was yesterday, the first time she plucked off a spearmint leaf, handed it to me and told me to chew on it. The taste of spearmint was so strong and good.

And then, I was off in daydreamland…remembering all those summers spent in Cottondale, learning about plants, discovering how to divide bulbs, and pinch off cuttings and root them in water. Picking strawberries and blackberries. Scooping up pecans from the ground. No one has a green thumb like my grandma. She used to embarrass family members at Disney World by breaking off pieces of plants in the landscaping, wrapping them up in a damp paper towel and hauling them home to take root.

I don’t think there was a summer that passed as a child that I didn’t come home with cuttings, plants, a kitten, or a combination of the three. Altheas that grow in my parents’ yard today started out as footlong twigs I hauled home from Cottondale one summer.

I look back and I’m so thankful that my grandma spent quality time with me as a child and cultivated in me a real love for plants and gardening. I look at my niece and nephew today and I’m glad they show some interest when my mom hauls them out to the garden to pull weeds or pick beans. I know they’ll look back on these days and perhaps, some day while sniffing something in the Publix produce section, they’ll be taken back to a happy time spent with their grandma.

It’s Grandparents Day. Call your grandma and tell her you love her. And your granddaddy, too.

photo credit: Fire Engine Red