“ Jenny, be a pet and run into the garden and pull us two nice lettuces for supper,” said my Mum, as she was beginning to prepare a summer weekend meal. I hopped down the 3 back cement steps, rounding the corner as i reached the bottom, and skipped down the gently sloping paved path on the west side of our large house, past the steep basement steps by the wood storage area, past our little greenhouse where my father carefully tended geranium cuttings through the Fall until late Spring, when they were planted in the garden, past our toolshed under the house, which had a plank of wood as a ramp into a dampish dark earthy smelling space with shelving that held various garden tools….i recall grasping in the half dark for handles of tools while balancing on the lower part of the ramp. Deeper in behind our heavy wooden barrow, that had removable side planks and long wooden handles, was more shelving, where green tomatoes were laid covered with newspaper, to ripen at the beginning of Fall when the weather turned wet. And above my reach were various containers of fertilizers and pesticides.
Opposite the toolshed door was the laburnum tree with a stack of wood under it, against a latticed wooden fence, where i sometimes sat daydreaming in the summers, loving the shade, relishing the gorgeous yellow gold dripping blossoms, and looking with respect at the huge black seedpods, which our mother, with her characteristic gift of clear and memorable teaching, had instructed us were extremely poisoness!
I followed the path around it’s curved right angle corner, past the dahlia bed ( the lush greenery would produce large bright red and yellow blossoms in late September, early October, always in time for our school Harvest Festival, to which i contributed a huge bunch annually). On my right was the steeply sloped rhododendron garden….my early July garden duty was to pick off the old sticky blossoms, being very careful to protect the new leaf growth coming in just beside the old blossom!
The cement path ended and a small earth ramp led onto a wide grassy path, that led to our large lawn, boardered by various garden beds. I continued across the lawn, now running ( my usual childhood speed when on a happy mission in the garden ), past the long rosebed filled with lovingly tended, memorably coloured and scented tea roses, bordered with sweet william and a few scattered marigolds ( to help with aphids). My father loved the roses and for an occasion would pick them and spend much time arranging the roses in a simple grey rounded ceramic vase. Today, i have this vase, filled with imitation roses which i occassionally arrange and rearrange to get just right! The inherited trait of a sensitive eye and heart that savours beauty and colour.
With a barely noticeable gentle downslope, began a grassy curving path that led past a huge rhubarb plant nestled between two tall fruitful cherry trees on the right and a lovely cedar tree on the left. Under that small cedar tree I had a quiet and simple “fort”, with a swept earthen floor, walls of curved cedar boughs….i don’t recall on what i sat, perhaps a lower curved bough or perhaps just the powdery earth….i sat and mused, soaking in the greens and the scents of my surroundings. At Eastertime, i would pick mosses from rocks lining the flower beds and tiny purple and yellow primroses which bloomed in the rockery and garden beds near the cedar fort, and would decorate little baskets for our table, perhaps lay a tiny chocolate egg on the moss….my Mum used to hide jelly beans in the house, and we kids would find them, sometimes long after the holiday, in imaginative hidden nooks and crannys in our rambling multiroomed house.
Finally I reached the vegetable garden, two large areas of rich soil. Every few years, large piles of manure, both cow and mushroom, would be dumped on the edge of our sidewalk, and my brothers and I and our parents all took turns using the spades to fill the wheelbarrows and take loads around to where the rest of the family team would dig it into the soil.
There were two rows of lettuce, also Swiss chard, broad beans, kholrabi and string beans, tomatoes, and vegetable marrows, which i have recently been educated to understand were overgrown zucchinis!! I pulled two lettuce, usually a Romaine type of leaf, though we also grew tender butternut lettuce. The dark brown moist soil hung around the roots, and I would shake it off while holding the lettuce as far away from myself as i could. Sometimes there were little slugs that fell off too.
I ran back to the house; we rinsed the leaves well, patted them dry with a tea towel and served them plain on a platter. To this day, I love to take a full lettuce leaf, fold it into a wrap type structure ( the filling is lettuce and the cover is lettuce :). Delicious, garden fresh, and the central crunchy stem, or stump, is the sweetest! As i commented on that, my father would say: “Pet likes the stump!”
It was only many years later that i realized that “Pet” was the nickname of my paternal grandmother, Peternal Emilie Holloway Dolman. ( please see upcoming blogpost!)
Pet’s granddaughter, Jennifer, also likes the stump; my Gary faithfully leaves me a small section or two of lettuce stump sitting on the counter, after he takes the leafy part in preparing his lunch sandwich☺️💚
Here is a photo of lettuce grown at Mayne Island this past summer ( the farmer had kept the roots on and bagged them…) It was a HUGE lettuce, much fuller than the ones i recall, but the taste and scent of the fresh leaves and crunchy sweet stems transported me back to my childhood lettuce leaves and inspired me to hop, skip and run down memory lane into my childhood garden to the sweet and beautiful plants carefully tended and lovingly grown there.
JenniEliz 