I am watching from afar as my sister and many friends plant their gardens in 2020. The ongoing pandemic and concerns about future food shortages are driving more citizens than ever (even hardened city folk) into growing their own vegetables.

I have contemplated following suit, but there are the realities of my lack of planters, tools and soil (which are becoming increasingly hard to source), combined with the legitimate concerns that the animals in my yard will get to their meal before I get mine. Fundamentally, however, there is my general disinclination to get my hands dirty, and my failure to inherit that trait known as a “green thumb” – it seems that my sister got both our shares. Believe me, I know: over the years I have practiced on houseplants, with dismal results. My friends have been “coached” by now to give me cut flowers because those are supposed to die eventually anyway and therefore leave me feeling less like a “murderess”.

Unlike me, my mother had a great knack for taking care of houseplants. She also loved her flower garden, and my childhood home was carefully landscaped with various trees, flower beds and even a small dedicated rose bed. To this day, few things bring my mother as much joy as a vase of fresh cut flowers.

While my father did a lot of the landscaping, his real passion was growing vegetables. I’m not exactly sure what brought it on – an attempt to save money/have fresh produce or my father’s need to get his hands in the dirt, most likely both – but at some point in the mid 1970’s, my parents decided to start a vegetable garden in a section of the backyard. My father planted beans, carrots, radishes, rhubarb, kohlrabi, Swiss chard, chives and other assorted vegetables. Growing anything in the relatively inhospitable climate of Newfoundland, where I grew up, was quite a feat and it is a tribute to my parents’ joint love of growing things that they succeeded as they did for over thirty-five years.

The garden necessitated a lot of care and cultivation. The topsoil in Newfoundland is thin and poor for growing much beyond potatoes and root vegetables (yes, it’s called “The Rock” for a very good reason!), so my father would arrange for a load of manure from a local farm to be delivered to our home each spring. On at least one notable occasion, he ordered a load of small fish called caplin instead as that year’s fertilizer. As you can imagine, these “organic enriching agents”, for a time each spring, lent a unique “perfume” to our backyard and I was ever grateful when the passage of time and the rain caused the odour to dissipate. My father also set up an old barrel to catch rainwater that could be used to water the garden during the times when there were water shortages in the summer. It likely also helped save my frugal parents on their water bills. And, of course, there was the requisite compost pile.

Another feature of my father’s vegetable garden was his greenhouse. It was a structure made of wooden ribs, covered in plastic sheeting. The inside of the greenhouse was outfitted with upper and lower beds: the upper beds were filled with head and leaf lettuce, while the lower beds contained tomato and cucumber plants. When everything ripened within the same two-week period, our neighbours were the recipients of my parents’ largess as the four of us couldn’t possibly eat the dozens of simultaneously ripening tomatoes and cucumbers by ourselves. Initially the neighbours were grateful, but, as the weeks wore on, I suspect they accepted these abundant “gifts” with good grace in the spirit of maintaining positive neighbourly relations. As I recall, none of our neighbours made homemade spaghetti sauce so I’m still not sure how they “used up” all the vegetables that my parents begged them to take – perhaps they were “regifted” on! To be honest, I never quite understood why my father chose to plant so many tomatoes – I suspect that for him the growing was almost an even greater pleasure than the eating.

To this day I recall the unique smell in the greenhouse, of damp earth, vegetation, and sunshine: if I smelled it today, I know I would be instantly transported back in time to my twelve-year old self. Being made of plastic sheeting, the greenhouse inevitably tore apart in the wind and snow of Newfoundland winters and each spring my father would sheath the structure anew in its translucent shell. On the cold windy spring and fall days my sister and I would sometimes shelter inside to get warm, but we were invariably driven out again by buzzing insects in the form of bees or wasps. We preferred the bite of the cold to the sting of an insect. On warmer days, the greenhouse served as a windbreak and we sisters would set up our lawn chairs behind the structure in order to find a warm place to lie in the sun and tan.

To add to the natural bounty my parents offered us, my father especially loved going out into the woods to gather blueberries. September was blueberry month in our household – it still amazes me when locally grown blueberries are available in July in Ontario, but that was the reality of the Newfoundland growing season. The blueberries were carried home by the bucketful and then carefully washed and cleaned by my parents. I don’t think my mother enjoyed the cleaning process much – it was tedious and often contained surprises of unwelcome creepy crawlies. But she did her part stoically. Some blueberries were served fresh with milk and sugar for dessert. The rest were set aside so that my father could make his own blueberry wine – another way to save money, this time on alcohol. Once my father set in a new batch of blueberry wine, our house would smell of musky fermenting berries for days. Upon arrival home from a long day of work, my father would hurry down into the basement to stir the mash. The mess was later squeezed first through a potato ricer and later through cheesecloth to separate out the liquid from the solids. The resulting ambrosia was then transferred into fermenting containers, monitored closely for readiness, and eventually decanted into old liquor bottles with screw-on tops – nothing like pouring homemade blueberry wine out of an old rum or vodka bottle! The alcohol content was unusually high for wine and there are a number of stories of friends and guests who miscalculated its potency, with invariably “interesting” results – more than once, that wine turned a normally quiet and reticent friend into the life of the party! When my parents moved to Toronto in 2009, they brought along the remaining bottles of Dad’s last batch and it was a sad day indeed when the final bottle was emptied.

My father also ventured into the woods to gather mushrooms. One year he (infamously) brought home 150 pounds of fresh chanterelles. He had his “secret spots”, which he would not divulge to anyone except the occasional trusted guest he took along. He would again come home with tubs full of fresh fungi, which he and my mother would wash and clean (more unwanted creepy crawlies!). Some were served fresh in a cream sauce over mashed potatoes for dinner, a meal that never brought me much joy. The rest were placed on a window screen propped up on four soup cans on the top of the refrigerator, where they would stay until they had completely dehydrated and shriveled up into shadows of their former plump selves. They were then sealed in glass jars for future use in sauces and meat dishes. During our trips to Germany, my parents would take along numerous jars for our relatives, who prized these gifts like pirate’s booty.

Although my mother wasn’t overly involved in the actual gardening or gathering process, her responsibilities were on the front and back end of the operation. She and my father would discuss each spring which vegetables to plant. And once the crops began to bear fruit, it was my mother’s job to prepare and preserve the food. After the requisite washing and cleaning, she would blanche the vegetables before putting them into freezer bags for the deep freeze so that we could eat the homegrown harvest over the winter. She would make soups using all parts of the plants – I still remember the Swiss chard leaves floating on the top of my soup and I don’t think this vegetable has crossed my plate since the day I left home. One of my favourite treats was eating fresh leaf lettuce from the greenhouse with a special dressing she made of oil, lemon juice and sugar – so simple and so tasty.

On reflecting back on these days of my childhood, I realize now that my parents were “green” and “organic” before such concepts really existed. But they weren’t driven by ecological concerns. My father loved “getting back to the earth” and I think it was his form of release from the stress of his job. My parents both grew up on farms as young children and lived through the war. They were frugal and very disciplined about saving money. The healthy aspect of growing their own vegetables was really only a secondary consideration. And I, ungrateful kid, did not appreciate what they offered me.

Alas, since the green thumb and love of growing things has passed me by completely, my kids are true city kids whose produce comes from California, Mexico and Chili via the local supermarket. Now in 2020 when everyone is planting their own gardens, I wish that I were a better example to my boys and that I had paid more attention to my parents’ bountiful gifts.