I know it’s Mother’s Day this sunday, but for me May is Mother’s Month. My mother was born on the first day of May and her middle name is May. So how can I not think of the woman who made me a gardener this whole month, which is busy with gardening activities and just bursting forth with flowers and growth.

My mother used to take me out in the garden plop me down on my little ass while she worked away in the garden. I’m sure I learned to dig before I ever walked or talked. And I’m sure I learned to be a gardener, learned the joys and travails of gardening from  my mother. Everything after was just filler.

In the my mother’s garden, it was always her garden though my father tilled the vegetable patch and mowed the lawn and we kids reluctantly weeded; it was always her garden. She was a dedicated gardener, she was outside as soon as the spring thaw permitted and didn’t quit until the snow flew. I often saw it as way too much. Of course now I’m doing it. We had a large vegetable patch for a city lot about 400 square feet and we grew everything possible to eat. My mother wasn’t only creating a gardener as she raised me but also a gourmand. Nothing compares to my memory of those tangy vine ripened tomatoes, or the crisp clarity of summer cucumber  and the earthy funk of rutabagas. Beyond the toil and the gustatory pleasures I learned growing vegetables in my mother’s garden I also learned to appreciate beauty there in her flower garden.

Now that I am on a farm thousands of miles from my childhood home and the garden I grew up in has long been sold and turned into lawn I still carry that garden with me, try to recreate it, not specifically, though we grow peonies and I even planted a Peace rose a reminder of that garden. But what I do plant are vegetables. Loads and loads of vegetables.

Because I think turnips are as beautiful as roses and I bet I learned that from my mother, too.