POETRY

From The Garden

Week prompt: foods of my ancestors

Foods of our ancestors are what sustain us as we gather around the table, but it is also certain smells and aromas that link us to our past.

The scent of smoke from an old wood stove is what pulls me back to my youth and to memories of my grandparents’ summer farm up in the Adirondack mountains.

Far from our regular urban life, I treasured our time at their farm with the well in the front of the house, dairy cows down at the base of the hill and even the requisite disgusting old outhouse. Every summer was an adventure when we drove up the gravel driveway to the farm.

And it’s certain smells that trigger memories even today that pull me back there.

For me, it’s smoke from the old wood stove where my grandma would waken us with pancakes literally hot off the griddle.

And dirt. Dirt from the garden, for both my dad and granddad brought me up to appreciate the importance of gardening. Gardening for the foods we could enjoy in a summer harvest as well as for the beauty of delicate roses or hardy marigolds….

From the garden

The scent of sun-warmed tomatoes waft up, and I rub my hands to brush dirt away as I prepare bounty freshly picked, summer crops and pale, delicate cosmos.

Every summer I dig holes to plant seeds which will provide sustenance or delicate fragrance and beauty to nourish both body and soul.

I remember my father entering the kitchen, hands gently holding pungent tomatoes or, at times, a perfect peach rose, his offering to grace our dinner meal.

And my grandfather, a stern and quiet force, always planted delicate flowers of white and purple cosmos with fern-like green leaves to soften the blackened and cracked pavement.

It’s almost planting time here to prepare the garden for this year’s crop of tomatoes, herbs and borders of white and purple cosmos which will bring smiles when they bloom.

Dirt from the garden links my tomorrows with my yesterdays.