Grandmother's Garden Poetry Scrapbook

Yesterday, I received this delightful email about a very unusual scrapbook containing garden poetry from Park Seed. Enjoy!

To Park Seed Co.

Hi! I live in Vermont.

I found among my Grandmother's possessions, a scrapbook, sort of, of poems she had clipped in 1900-1902 from your Park's Floral Magazine, a seed catalog that everyone in those days prized highly!

Two poems in her little collection are singing the praises of your magazine--what great advertisements for it! Most are poems about flowers and nature.

The poems are pasted OVER the words on each page of an old book, 6" x 4" in size. (The book was about Treatment By Inhalation, "Compound Oxygen Not A Drug," copyrighted in 1888.)

Out of curiosity, I looked on the internet and see that you are still around! Congratulations!

I'll include one of the little poems for you, and I think you will like it!

Park's Floral Magazine

O, winsome little maiden,

Tis ever thus you're laden,

With information that we all should know.

You tell us how the flowers

In sunshine and in showers,

Must be treated, with the best results to grow

Allen County O. Nov. 23, 1899

by Lizzie Mowen

I hope this brings a smile to you all at Parks!

P.S. I would like one of your famous seed catalogs as I have some nice flower beds that could use more posies.

Sincerely,

Dottie Ann Richardson

If you have interesting artifacts from your garden or your catalog collection, please email a digital photograph and your story to me at ckuhl@parkseed.com.

Comments

[oldglass01@netzero.net]

I waited ever January to get my Park seed book. To me that was the beginning of spring. I especially like the Whopper tomatoes. Mine was always the envy of the neighborhood. Happy anniversary

[Joan Wickersham]

In Ohio our winters can be rather long.At times it seems they will never end. As a young child I can remember the day the Park Seed catalog arrived - usually right after Christmas. Coming from a family of 9 children it is with great joy I remember sitting around our mother and looking at the beautiful flowers and vegetables. We were all allowed to help pick the ones we would grow in the garden that year. Our "walk" in your garden helped us make it thru the long winters. I still watch for the weekly emails to look at your offerings and catch a breath of spring. Thanks Park Seed for giving us something to look forward to - and many more years of business.

[Claire]

Thank you both for your comments--I love hearing from you! As it happens, I lived in Columbus, OH for a couple of years, Joan, so I know exactly what you mean about those long, COLD winters! I guess it would be rude to mention that here in Greenwood, SC, we are supposed to have a high temp in the 70s? Not bad for January, huh?!

[Nell Shanks Reynolds]

As a child in San Antonio during WWII, we dug "fox holes" in the back yard, with our mother's help in their locations. Later, we drove to the bus station where we picked up a carload of brown-paper-wrapped packages from Granddaddy. Mama had stayed home with the babies, filling buckets, dishpans, and washtubs with water. My older brother and I got to go with Daddy. Unwrapping the brown paper, we revealed what I now know were bare-root plants: 6 peach trees, berry bushes, bushes for a hedge in front, a clindrical tree that grew taller than our house, and others that I have forgotten
after so long. We lived in a jerry-built division with all the houses on the streets built by the same plan, some with the kitchen on one side, and some reversed. Nobody had anywhere as nicely landscaped a yard as ours. And the peaches! Granddaddy had selected two that ripened in June; the next two mid-July through August, and the last two in September and October. We could just go into the back yard and pick a peach to eat. Or a fig. Or a plum. I have never since hace such abundance simply for the picking.

Much later, when I came back from college and started teaching, for the first time in my life, I had spare money and time -- not much, but some. I bought a cherry seedling that was maybe a inch in diameter and as tall as I was (5'5").
I dug a hole in the back yard and planted it. My parents stood back and watched, cheeks twitching. They had both grown up in the country, my mother on a ranch and my father on a hog farm/plant nursery/ fruit orchard. Their families butchered their own beef or hogs and grew their own veggies. The idea of growing something --anything -- because I wanted to was alien to them, but they had always let us do what we wanted, as long as it was legal and not dangerous. Midway through the summer, my cherry tree fell accidental victim to the lawn mower wielded by my older brother.

Later, after I married and had my own house, I dug and planted my own veggie garden. I supplied all the labor for the digging and planting, and the weeding.
My husband and son eagerly helped with the harvesting and eating, though. My parents' cheeks still twitched when they saw me gardening, but they ate all the tomatoes I gave them.

[Mad]

My, so many gardeners are also poets. I, too, feel my spirit stirred when I tend my garden, but I lack the words to express my joy

[Claire]

Dear Nell, thank you for sharing these wonderful memories! I'd love for you to email me (ckuhl@parkseed.com) with more...and pictures, too!

Dear "Mad," thanks for visiting and sharing your comment. I think many of us can identify with your sentiment!

[Milly Stepp]

A little poem for spring.

First you open package
Next you plant the seeds
Then you feed and water
And grow a crop of weeds.

-Milly Stepp 1989

[Claire]

Milly,
What a delightful and insightful little poem. Pretty much sums up my experience as an official member of the NON-Green-Thumbs of America!
Thanks for sharing!