As we drive back home to Georgia from North Carolina, I am flooded with memories. We have spent a long weekend at the home my parents built on Eagles Nest Mountain. Every summer growing up our family vacation was in the mountains where my Daddy was born and raised. Vacations were the last two weeks in August, timed around when Grandfather's garden came in. It didn't seem to matter to my Dad that the cousins my brother and I played with would already be back in school. Classes started back earlier in the mountains to allow for snow days which were not even a consideration in South Florida where I grew up.
Dinner would be at noon with a table filled with the garden's bounty. Most meals would include tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, okra, black-eyed peas, rhubarb, Grandmother's cornbread or biscuits and strawberry jam. While the vegetable garden was my Grandfather's it was my Grandmother who lined the cellar shelves with the beautiful jars of vegetables and jellies that would carry the riches of the garden through the winter months. In the corner of the front porch she would have apple slices drying on screens and the unused upstairs bedroom would have flower seeds spread to dry for next year.
Grandfather lived to be 92 and I am sure it was his love of gardening that contributed to his long productive years. My Dad also gardened both in Fort Lauderdale and in North Carolina. Growing up our backyard had mango, avocado, banana, and various citrus trees. My Dad had a slat house full of orchids, a bed of roses for Mom and a small vegetable garden. The landscaping around the house was mostly native trees and shrubs as they were the ones that could best survive the seasonal hurricanes.
Graduate work at UGA brought Jerry and I to Georgia. I enjoyed having seasons but not too much winter. In fact if you want to, you can garden pretty much year round here. Besides that we were living between Florida and North Carolina so visiting family was easy to do.
The gardening heritage is being passed down. Our Georgia raspberry plants came from my Dad's North Carolina garden, which in turn came from Grandfather's. We have shared them with our daughter's families. The grandchildren are too young to grasp the lineage but even the three year old knows which are the ripe ones for picking.
After Grandfather died my parents built their own home on the mountain we hiked every summer. The lot Dad chose to build on was the spot where he camped as a Boy Scout. Retaining the mature trees this house was also landscaped with native shrubs and a spot for the vegetable garden was tilled. The house is ours now and our children and grandchildren come here to hike the mountain, search for special rocks, learn the wildflowers, and hear the stories of those who first loved this land.
