Part one: The big garden

Harvest time! In years past, I have always had a huge garden. It was almost a full time job, so much so that it consumed much of my time. It was good exercise and was one of my very favorite hobbies. Through the summer, I would spend many hours daily tending my garden.

I had a roto-tiller, a big clunky one, not like the ones now days that are light and easy to handle.

The worst job was trying to keep ahead of the weeds. Some years they almost did me in.

But ... when harvest time arrived and I stared picking all of those veggies, I knew all of that work was well spent. I would round up all of the canning jars I could find, drag out the canning kettle and the big jelly kettle and I was ready for a few weeks of spending most of my waking hours in the kitchen. I canned tomatoes, V8 juice, beans, peas, applesauce, corn, both dill and sweet pickles. I even tried making sauerkraut one year. My neighbor and dear friend Angie, who lived down the road, took me under her wing and showed me how it was done, by golly it turned out pretty good.

I forgot to mention that my mom would come up each summer and stay for a couple of months or so, and if there was anything she liked better than canning, I didn't know about it.

She was my teacher and mentor and taught me everything I needed to know about canning. I always had plenty of pint canning jars, as we always canned a little of everything for her to take home. She was such a hard worker and never complained about anything.

One year she had quite a lot of jars and was a little concerned if there would be enough room for all of her jars in the car.

Bob, who loved my mother dearly -- but knowing she took everything so seriously -- delighted in teasing her -- told her one day, "Mom if there isn't enough room in the car for all of your jars, we will just tie a rocking chair on top of the car and you can ride up there."

Well ... her eyes got big as saucers and she said, "Bob if there isn't enough room, I think I could leave a few jars here." He howled about that for days.

As my mind goes back to those forgotten years of gardens, canning and freezing, I think of another story.

Back then our daughter Susie and son in law Mike were living in Marshfield, and they had next door neighbors who were elderly and both were blind. They loved garden veggies and they loved to can.

So at the end of the season I always managed to take over a variety of fresh vegetables for them. I would always call them and let them know I was coming. They would meet us at the door with big smiles on their faces and could hardly wait to start canning. It always amazed me how they could do the canning, but they did.

One day when we were visiting Susie and Mike she was out in the yard weeding some flowers along the side of their house. I noticed that she wasn't wearing gloves, so I offered to get her some gloves.

She very kindly looked at me and said, "Marilyn, thank you ever so much, but my fingers are my eyes when I am working in the dirt and the flowers."

Why didn't I think of that? They would always invite us in for coffee and homemade cookies. I noticed that their house, especially the floor was so clean I think I would be safe in saying I could have eaten off of it. He tuned pianos and also played the piano, his fingers really danced all over the key board.

Editor's Note: This column will be continued next week.