Happy Birthday!

Today is my Grandmother, "Ma Jones", birthday.  She would have been 101 and if she were still alive.  I miss her every single day.  Some days it seems like if I could just sit on her couch while she watched TV or on her screen porch with her it would make it all better.  The older I get the more I miss her.  Isn't that strange? Just this week I watched a video of her in her garden taken in 1991 and I sat and closed my eyes because more than seeing her I just wanted to hear her.

I think she would love the way my children are growing and would be crazy about them. She would be proud of how strong and smart and beautiful and independent my daughter is, and I know she would be smitten like all the girls with my oldest son, and somehow I think she would have a special place just for my little man.  I know her heart would have broken though,over the last year, watching my family dissolve.  She loved my husband dearly and losing him would have been like losing one of her own children, much the way my parents have felt.  It is a loss I am glad she didn't have to endure.  She saw pain in her own life, losing a Mother when she was a small child, a daughter and becoming a Widow at a much too young age.  She hurt when we all hurt and truly was the epitome of "you are only as happy as your least happy child."  She was, on the surface, a pessimist of the greatest kind but seeing her stick her hands in the soil again each Spring tells me somewhere inside there was an eternal optimist.

I love you dearly, Ma.

Christmas Cactus & Friendship

This year two of my friends gifted me with Christmas Cacti!  The one above is planted in a gorgeous footed, vintage, cranberry glass dish and literally overflowing with gorgeous pale pink blooms.  I love these crazy plants that bloom with abandon when the season is right because my Grandmother loved them.  I am still the guardian of one of her beloved Christmas Cactus (see it here). 

This one was given to me by my sweet friend, Susan, who is the most talented person I know.  She hand painted and monogrammed the pot herself (in between doing amazing things with refinished furniture.) I keep telling her she needs a blog to share all her finds and inspiration with the rest of us.   I look so forward to being able to cultivate these plants as a reminder of what a blessing friends can be!

I  like Christmas Cacti better than poinsettias mostly because the don't tend to die on me before Christmas actually comes around. 

Gardening Genes

I love to be in the garden.  I don’t love the heat, the bugs, the dirt…the occasional snake…no sir, but, I love the garden.  The yard and gardens of a house are as much a part of it to me as the roof.  It has been this way my entire life and I have come to the conclusion it is genetic.  Although I don’t come from parents that ever cared one bit about gardening or yard work (I grew up in a household that pretty much considered mowing the grass to be the extent of gardening to be done.) I did grow up with gardening in my blood.

My Maternal Grandmother was my queen bee of gardening, both vegetable and flower.  She worked in her yard until the very last day of her life…literally.  She just couldn’t abide by a spot that didn’t have something planted in it.  Her yard was full of blooming bushes, bulbs, perennials and a very liberal dose of pass along plants.  After you got through the yard you would find her always overflowing vegetable garden.  She would plant row after row of tomatoes, beans, peppers, squash, okra, corn and the occasional watermelon…. every year.  Though she was a widow my entire life (I was in my 40s when she died) she planted a garden big enough to feed a small army and what she didn’t eat or give away she canned…every year.  The funny thing about her garden was that she always planted a copious amount of green beans but she didn’t even like green beans.  That remains one of life’s great mysteries. 

Not only did she like to tend her own yard and garden but she always liked to help out others in the gardening way… even if by force.  She wasn’t content to let ground sit idly by without something blooming out of that soil.  As my parents lived next door to her, they often became the unwilling targets of her need to spread seed.   My Grandmother was as determined to pretty up our yard as my parents were determined to ignore it.  So on any given day you might look out and there would be my Grandmother planting something my parent’s yard, much to their annoyance.  It is funny how small things that appear to be an act of generosity can get under the saddle of someone else!

Fortunately, I was often the recipient of her gardening spirit and generosity and most houses that my husband and I have owned have been left a legacy of pass along plants from my Ma Jones when the time for us to leave came.  One day, recently, my husband and I were at a dinner party and along with several other guests, were wandering through the lovely gardens of the host and the topic of plants came up.  Right off the tip of my tongue I was able to identify and share information about many of the plantings, which led someone to ask me how I knew so much about plants. The question surprised me for a minute and I realized the only explanation was my Ma Jones... So, if by gift or force, her gardening genes are still alive  and I hope and pray that somewhere deep down those genes were passed along to my children.

{Semi} Wordless Wednesday

My grandmother feeding my Mother...but notice,even back then,

Coke was the real thing!

Please see "The Legal Stuff" to the left.

{Semi} Wordless Wednesday

Didn't every, single, little boy in the '50s have this same outfit?

{Semi} Wordless Wednesday

written on back,

"Me (Addie Lou Jones) fishing - a good looking gal - ha"

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Wordless Wednesday

Soaps and The New Year

Here it is, at the end of another year. A time for looking forward and also a time for looking back. I find myself looking back on the changes brought by 2009. I must admit that one of the saddest was the passing of Guiding Light. Yes, you read that correctly, I am lamenting the passing of America's longest running Soap! I don't even watch Soaps, but I used to watch and still occasionally read up on my favs. By far, Guiding Light was always my favorite. I fell in love with the above pictured Grant Aleksander as Phillip Spaulding long before DH came into my life.

Though my adult devotion to the Soaps has been luke-warm, my dear grandmother (Ma Jones), who died several years ago, was a die hard Soap fan. It was known far and wide that you didn't interrupt her "Shows". She would even say less-than-positive things about any newscaster or President who saw fit to interrupt her daily visits in Genoa City (The Young and the Restless), LA (Bold & Beautiful), Oakdale (As the World Turns) and the final stop being in Springfield (Guiding Light). Honestly, even if the world were ending, it would have been well advised to do so before the beginning of her Shows or afterward...otherwise, she was NOT participating!

I am not sure what exactly I find so sad about the slow, winding down of the Soap Opera genre. Maybe it is the nostalgia that comes with seeing much beloved brands pass away (Pontiac comes to mind). I guess it is just seeing something that was so intrinsic to my childhood era end. My Mother and her friends watched Soaps. It was the background noise of our home every afternoon. As I became a teen, and into my college years, it became a shared experience among my friends. Who remembers where they were when Luke and Laura got married (the 1st time)? Were you huddled around the TV at home, or in a dorm room or sharing it with friends in the Student Center? Oh, and then there was the wide spread popularity of VCRs...to record and watch it later. No, I am not kidding!

Soaps always have beautiful people, with beautiful homes, and of course, beautiful clothes. The idea for my Christmas Wedding was inspired by Tom and Margo's (As the World Turns) Christmas wedding in 1983. Oh, and don't forget, no one ever ages poorly on Soaps...how cool is THAT? And now the news is, not only have we seen the death of Guiding Light in September of 2009, but 2010 will bring the execution date during September for As the World Turns, as well. I am just glad Ma Jones isn't here to see that...it would have killed her.

RIP, Oakdale....

Clematis, Spring 2006