For Mom: Gardens and Garden Quotes

Today is my mom's birthday. I've been thinking of her lately, not only because of her birthday, but since Mother's Day is this coming Sunday. A few days ago my older sister proposed the idea that my siblings help to clear out the garden bed in honor of my mom, which I thought was a good idea. I wish I could be there to help.

My mom liked to garden, but she also was practical in understanding how much time she could devote to yard work. For one thing, her allergies were bothered by certain weeds. I particularly remember her waging war against what she called ragweed - although in writing this post I realized that the plant that I remember her calling "ragweed" was actually kochia (ragweed looks very different). When we lived in Colorado, she pulled up lots of kochia from our huge, huge yard. She also would pour vinegar on weeds to kill them and stop them from growing back, which was her natural method of applying weed killer. I remember she also spread a black tarp ground cover and rocks around the area of the front of the yard in Colorado, to limit all of the weeding (our property was about 7/8 of an acre). Sometimes the kids would be enlisted to help pull out weeds, and would scout out these kochia weeds among the gray rocks:

For one or two years during our time in Colorado, we also planted a large vegetable garden in the backyard. I especially remember growing bush beans, probably because I thought those were the most fun to collect at harvest time. There also was a huge rhubarb plant in the garden, which I think was there before we bought our house. I remember we bought special hoses to help water all of the rows of vegetables. If I remember right, we could hook the hoses right up to the spigot of our well, because the garden was right next to the well house.

My mom was really thrilled to move into my family's current home, since the previous owner's late husband had planted a garden with different flowers that would bloom at different times of the season. My mom also planted some things in the yard which fit with her own particular interests and aesthetic, like the colonnade apple trees in our front yard. I think she planted a raspberry bush in the backyard after I moved away to college.

One of my mom's favorite quotes about gardens was one that I'm pretty sure was in her grandmother's garden, and her mom (my grandma) had a plaque with this same quote:  

The kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of the birds for mirth, one is nearer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth.

In honor of my mom, I started to decorate my yard today by getting a hanging flower basket. I've also gathered a couple of quotes about gardens that I think she'd enjoy. She also would probably be amused by this sign, since it fits with the way my family jokingly interacts with each other (which is best described as wit or sarcasm that is laced with oblique religious references or a slight air of puritanism). Here are some other quotes that I like and I think my mom would like, not only because of the content but because most of them are a little bit more old fashioned or historical in nature:

Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow. - Francis Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden. - Francis Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.  - Audrey Hepburn

If you want to be happy for a lifetime, be a gardener. - Chinese proverb

Nothing is more the child of art than a garden. - Sir Walter Scott

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Earth laughs in flowers  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses. - Abraham Lincoln

Happy birthday, Mom! You are loved and missed. It was fun to find these quotes today and make a new memory with you.