The Colorado sun is much too harsh for my Japanese red maple tree, but I shade it as much as I can and have prayed for it to survive, year after year, for decades now.
It was born of a tree on my parents’ land in Western Massachusetts, where the maple trees grow like weeds, spreading their roots and generating saplings that love the clouds and humidity that section of the country offers.
My dad, gone more than 35 years now, loved to garden and landscape. He planted and cared for the maple, dogwood, apple, pear and plum trees, as well as the grape vines, blueberry bushes, tomatoes and zucchini plants in the summer.
His Japanese red maple sprouted so many offshoots that he took to handing them out like Halloween candy. You can still spot them and their offspring all around the neighborhood, as well as in Maine, New Hampshire, Cape Cod and Colorado, where Dad’s children and grandchildren carried them — and keep them going still, in his memory.
Two of my nieces have done their part: Jen gave potted maple saplings to all 150 guests at her 2008 wedding (along with a lovely little story about Dad’s green thumb), and Lee distributed them at her backyard bridal shower in 2010. Who knows how many are still out there?
To many landscapers and gardeners, the power of nurturing life is a mighty draw. To me, it’s mostly about nostalgia, family and friends.
Sister Charlene in New Hampshire makes strawberry and rhubarb jam and pies every summer from the rhubarb cuttings given to her by the neighbors across the street from Mom and Dad. She got them in 1973.
She and sister Jay, in Massachusetts, still nurture Christmas cactus and aloe plants, the beginnings of which were in mom’s kitchen for years. I recall having to water them when I still lived there in the late 1970s. And I still have spider plants from “spiderettes” (yes, that’s what they’re called) that originated from one I had in my Miami apartment in 1985.
I still believe that I was hired at The Denver Post because of my dad’s apple tree. The managing editor called me for an interview one day in 1990, just when I was taking a pie out of the oven for Dad, who had peeled and sliced apples from his tree and brought them over for me to make him a pie. Thinking only of the pie, I brusquely asked her to call me back so it wouldn’t burn. (I got the job anyway. Turns out that she, too, made pies for her dad.)
Right now, I have a bucket of zinnia seeds in my garage. Each spring, I scatter them over tilled soil and thrill when they pop up, bright boutonnieres of fuchsia and orange and yellow and pink. The original seeds were given to me more than 20 years ago by dear Colorado buddies Pat and Dave Darnell, both long gone now.
In mid-March, I suddenly realized how late I was in starting my vegetable seeds for this year’s crop, and now I am looking forward to trading some seedlings with former Denver city councilman, friend and farmer extraordinaire, Charlie Brown.
Gardening and growing things are just part of who we are. It connects us to our place, our roots and to each other. It’s not how much pride I take out of harvesting those cukes and Cherokee Purple tomatoes; it’s the friends I will be sharing them with: Kathleen loves the yellow teardrop tomatoes; Betty asks for the English purple cherry; LeAnna wants the yellow squash; TJ the super sweet hybrid 100s; and Michelle will usually take anything out of the garden that I’m offering (and who will get my help setting up her own raised bed this year).
I had so many cucumbers last year that I couldn’t find enough people to give them to, so my partner ended up taking them to his office along with much of his abundant harvest of zucchini and tomatoes. (Building work alliances through garden gifts can’t hurt, amiright?)
The excess made me wonder about why I go through it all: the expense, the watering, the time, the sunburn, the bugs, the dirt under my fingernails. The failures. It’s certainly not cheaper than just buying produce from the grocery store, and there are other things I could be doing with my time in Colorado’s temperate climes (golf, anyone?).
It’s about the connections: To the land. To the people living on it. To family and friends. And memories.
