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| Mama's Garden by © biidsis It was hard for us to leave the lake; Medicine Lake was all I had known as a child. Running through sweetgrass, wild and free. I was angry I did not want to leave my home my sweet land and lake, this was where I first saw them, the people who came here before us. So here we were moving to a farm, where we would be considered city slickers. The first thing mama did was to put in a garden, dad tilled it for her, it was huge, 90’x120’ when she was done with it. We had an orchard too and berries of all kinds and wild grapes, we worked hard on mama’s garden, every morning barely before sunrise, we would gather fruit or vegetables to process before it got too hot. Then we were off to the kitchen to help mama. It was hard work, but we were so proud at the end of each day, proud of what we had done together as a family. But all the while the other farmer’s wives would cluck their tongues, mama put her garden in too soon, mama planted things that would never grow, mama planted flowers in her garden. Imagine that, what a shame and a waste of space. This is what we would hear them say when they came to visit. The children would call us "city slickers" that didn’t know a thing. Oh how they brought out the bear in me, but I was taught respect and held my tongue. A few weeks later these same women learned that my city slicker mama knew what she was doing, Her vegetables grew taller and sweeter than any that had ever grown there. Her fruits and berries flourished, and later in the summer the farmer’s wives asked mama why her garden was untouched by the rabbits? Why did she and her daughter have no bites from mosquitoes, when the farmer’s wives were chewed to bits? How was mama able to make things grow in this garden where they would never grow before? What did this young mother know that they didn’t? Well she told my sister and I after they had left, the flowers she planted to make her garden pretty and wasted so much space, were marigolds, rabbits and mosquitoes don’t like them. She planted the garden early, knowing in her heart that the threat of frost was over, thus her garden was taller, sooner than all the others were. She listened to her inner voice on that. Growing things in her garden that would never grow before? When we would go home, back to the lake to visit, we always came home with a trailer full of the lake weeds that we had cleaned from the shoreline. This went into the garden along with the usual natural fertilizer. How did mama know these things? It was her love of family and being able to feed us all, on her own. It was her love of Mother Earth that brought her these knowings. After that first summer the farmer’s wives looked at this young mother with respect, they opened their hearts and taught her even more about her garden and caring for her family. biidaaban |