No Silver Bells or Cockle Shells

The Old Man hasn't had a lot of luck growing vegetables. For some reason the old children's' nursery rhyme crossed my mind today. "Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row. " I remember hearing my mother quoting that at an early age. Miss Alma was quite a lady. She grew up in the country and had country ways until her death. I value those lessons she probably didn't even know she was teaching. Agriculture was a big part of her life as well as my father's.

His background was rural as well. His father was a sharecropper. In the event you are unaware of the concept, a sharecropper lived on someone else's farm and worked the crops. At harvest time, the owner shared the profits and/or produce with the tenant. I remember my dad talking about "suckering tobacco", saving and curing tobacco, and going to market with his dad. I recall he said it was hot, nasty work, made even worse by tobacco sap irritating his skin and having to squash these big worms before they could damage the crop.

Near my mother's homeplace, there was a community canning factory. The local folks brought their produce to the cannery and "put them up" for the winter. It was hot, tiring work and wasn't for the weak. My mother, her siblings, and my grandmother all worked in the canning factory. Sturdy stock, they. Her father eked out a living by raising produce, some carpentry work, and helping in a sawmill. Much more about my parents on later posts.

I didn't inherit my folks talents for farming. I must have the scummiest soil on earth behind my house. All the experts said, "You need to do a soil test". OK. I did a soil test. It said I needed phosphate, lime, and fertilizer. I put out phosphate, lime and fertilizer. No silver bells, no cockle shells, and you can definitely forget about the pretty maids. The tomato plants died after they got all of 15 inches tall, and you could cover the squash plants with a car wash bucket. I did, however, get one Jalepeno pepper. It was about the size of the first joint of my thumb.

My dad could coax a Thanksgiving banquet out of a gravel parking lot. I should have listened to him more. I remember he sometimes borrowed a pick-up and went to a friends house to clean out the horse barn. He would take me with him. I think it was on one of these trips that I firmly decided to learn where all the grocery stores were.

But next year, I'll try again. I'm thinking raised beds. Maybe I'll try to run down that little bandy-legged guy who squirted Miracle Grow on all those TV commercials. Not sure about the horse barn thing, though. The thought of that makes me glad there's always Harris-Teeter or Food Lion.