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Purple Blooms

Growing up gardening: My most amazing gardening memory – Part 2

Title: Tiny Garden-Huge Impact

Besides the Humpty-Dumpty Kindergarten project, you know, the cracked egg with grass for hair, I was inexperienced at growing anything. For heaven sakes I was in Kindergarten. But at that moment, when the first signs of green peeked up out of the top of my egg shell with less soil than I had on the bottoms of my shoes-I became a gardener!

I can still picture it sitting on the south-eastern exposure, sun drenched window sill, waiting for the seeds to do their thing. That very window sill contained Mom’s African Violets-with deep purple blooms and fuzzy leaves. Amazing little pots of color and texture and smells that still evoke childhood memories to me. Those violets were one of her prized possessions and one of my first connections to the nature version of “purple.”

Growing up gardening: My most amazing gardening memory Part 2

Anyhoo, my Humpty-Dumpty of a planter sitting there amidst all those little clusters of purple and green, must have looked darling! Oh yeah,then there were the tall background plants weirdly described to me as “mother-in-laws’ tongue.” So, there my little egg magically became real. It grew live, green spiked hair! I cut that hair so it would have a flat-top, like my cousin Mike wore. It thrilled me to see how tall the hair/grass would grow. I watered it carefully, with an eyedropper, so it wouldn’t drown and spill all over the craftsman oak woodwork that held our indoor garden. I loved that little planter, nursery rhyme guy!

He didn’t live long, though. Like most projects consisting of tablespoons of dirt, cracked egg shells and manicured grass/hair. After a while, his demise, instead of “having a great fall” was probably being thrown in the garbage can, one night after I went to bed. Mom or Dad threw things out like that. Of course, my Humpty-Dumpty egg shell with grass-hair gave me the start to an absolute love of the art of growing things. Later, that school year, I, with the help of my Dad, planted my Arbor Day tree in our backyard. But that’s another story. Did that teacher of mine, Mrs Schneider, know that a little project could spark and inspire wide eyed children at such a young age? I think so.

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