Seeing Through My Grandmother's Eye's
- The following is an article that was published recently in the May edition of the Outreach Magazine that I wrote recently about my Grandmother and her love of flowers. Below the article is her picture.
- Seeing through my Grandmother’s Eyes
- You sometimes never know the influence you might have on someone, or they on you. Looking back over my life, I can see how my grandmother’s vision of a worthwhile life has become my own.
- My Grandmother never drove a car or lived in a big house.
- She worked one year as a schoolteacher before getting married at 20. She was never famous, but in some circles, the name Christine Wolf was well known and respected. If you asked people who knew her, they’d say, “Christine was a cheerful, positive woman and accomplished gardener”. My maternal Grandmother also, had a strong love for God and family and she made a mean German chocolate cake. But, boy, she could garden. Like most people of her generation, she grew vegetables to help feed her family, but flowers were her passion. My grandmother learned early on the joy of nurturing a tiny seed, into something big and beautiful.
- I remember, my grand parents tiny, two bedroom house in Akron. The backyard was a small patch of grass with a picnic table, the rest of the 1 acre lot was a large garden. The front and sides of the small house had so many flowers that by late June, that it took on the look of a Thomas Kincaid painting.
- I can’t remember my grandmother ever saying there was a flower she did not like, but then she was never one to speak ill of anyone. Maybe she added flowers to that belief. If pressed for favorites she would say the “Double Delight Rose” for its two color blooms and wonderful fragrance and the aromatic Stargazer Lily.
- In the late 70’s both of us moved to NC. My grandmother went to live in mountains, and I followed the horses to Southern Pines. Whenever I went to visit her, she would take me around her small lot in Clyde and show me all her flowers. She would take time telling me all their names and history. I would listen patiently, genuinely admiring the bounty of blossoms, but my mind was more on that moist chocolate cake with the coconut icing I knew was inside. To my surprise though, just a few years later, I got hit with the bug. The plant bug that is, and in 1987 I became a landscape designer.
- My grandmother enjoyed my new occupation and our times together took on new meaning. We toured gardens, shared our favorite plants, and poured over new catalogs. She would ask me in detail about the landscapes I was working on, quizzing me on my plant choices. When we ran across a friend or acquaintance she would proudly say, “This is my Granddaughter Gail she designs gardens, she got that from me.” I was proud too.
- My grandmother developed macular degeneration in her late 70’s and her eyesight gradually became so bad that she had to move back to Ohio. But shortly before she did, she received her biggest notoriety for her garden talents. A passing reporter for the Asheville Times was so taken by Grams and her garden that he returned with a photographer. The following Sunday she was the cover story for the Features page.
- In the last year of her life she was no longer able to care for plants. So I tried to see things through her eyes. I started writing long letters chronicling what flowers were growing in my gardens, and describing what new and exciting plants were on the market. I figured visitors would read the letters to her, and they did, over and over again, until the next letter came.
- In the Asheville Times article my grandmother said, “It doesn’t help to complain and growing things helps me stay cheerful.” When I find myself feeling down I remember that and I get back to the garden and grow.
