Over the years I always had some sort of garden in my back yard.
Sometimes just tomato plants because I didn't have time to care for a big plot. But like Guy Clark said, 'What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes?'
I would never attempt a garden the size that we sometimes planted when I was a kid. We had squash, cucumbers, green beans, okra and tomato plants covering most of the lot behind the house. It had been a horse corral in earlier times so the ground was super fertilized and boy did it produce.
We had more vegetables that even our family with six hungry kids could consume so my mom did a lot of canning. She made bread and butter pickles that were the best I ever tasted. Now the one thing I would not eat were her canned pears. I could eat a pear green off the tree but never a cooked one.
Our old smokehouse was used to store the canned goods that got us through the winter months.
When we were able to get enough mustang grapes she would make jelly. You talk about good, that stuff never lasted until winter. Kinda like Granddaddy Kindla's mustang grape wine. Good stuff!
There were things I didn't like having to do in connection with that big garden. Hoeing weeds and watering every day kept me from my adventures on the river. Some days I would spend an hour sitting and snapping green beans.
I'm glad we usually had pole beans instead of the bush type because they were easier to pick standing up. We cut bamboo poles at the river for them to climb up on. Back in those days if we had a bag of pinto beans from the store we had to pour them out and pick out all the little rocks that came packaged with the beans.
I was always scared when my mom brought out the pressure cooker to start canning. Evidently my mom heard horror stories about those things blowing up and I think she believed them because she made us stay out of the kitchen when she fired that thing up. I just remember that little thermometer thing sitting on top and bouncing around while steam was seeping out.
So many of the things I did as a kid helping my mom seemed like a burden back then because I just wanted to go play. Looking back now I know it was a blessing I got to spend that time with her.
It seems her work was never done and yet she still found time to teach me how to drive that old stick shift truck we had as I was growing up in Bandera.
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