Shown is my late Mother’s
donkey plant holder.
Shown is my late Mother’s
Scotty Dog plant holder.
My
mother liked plants. She was raised as a South Carolina farm girl. She had two
sisters and six brothers.
When
I was a small child, my family lived in a white-shingled house on Groce Meadow
Road, Taylors, S.C. Taylors was a town located miles from our house. The
Taylors post office serviced our “rural route” in upper Greenville County, so our
mailing address was “Taylors,” though we lived near the rural Sandy Flat and
Mountain View communities. That was a bit confusing to me, as a child.
I
remember the side steps of our family’s house. During spring and summer, Mother
kept an elephant ear plant (“Colocasia”) beside those steps. It grew from the
ground and not from a pot. I liked that plant with its three thick, long stems
and huge green “ears” that transported me in imagination to African
jungles.
Those
plants are tubers and can’t survive outdoors in winter, I’ve read. I don’t
recall Mother buying a bulb or digging up and storing a used bulb as summers
ended. I think the bulb lay dormant in the ground and “came back” every year. Shirley,
my younger sister and only sibling, says those bulbs can last for a few years
in the ground if the weather isn’t too cold. Perhaps being planted near our house
kept that bulb alive for several years.
A
sage plant grew where the planted-in-fescue field met up with the mowed
backyard of our house. Mother planted that sage; I recall its potent smell.
Ornamental as well as useful, that plant’s gray-green leaves flavored dressing
Mother sometimes served with chicken and gravy.
Mama
liked “thrift,” but what she called “thrift” may have been “phlox subulata.”
The
“Missouri Botanical Garden” site describes the “thrift” I remember helping Dad
and Mom plant in our yard on Groce Meadow Road. That plant “crept” and spread
carpet-like and could prick-tickle one’s fingers. Mother obtained most of her thrift
from friends who gave her patches of it to plant on a small bank in front of
our house. She also used “thrift” as a border for plants nestled near our
abode’s foundation. I especially liked white thrift, which, during springtime,
stood out visually in yards I observed while riding the Mountain View
Elementary School bus.
(From
“missouribotanicalgarden.org: “Moss phlox [also moss pink, mountain phlox or
creeping phlox] is a vigorous, spreading, mat-forming, sun-loving phlox that
grows to only six inches tall but spreads to 24 inches wide. It is noted for it
creeping habit.” That phlox blooms in April-May. Its flowers are red-purple to
violet-purple, pink or infrequently white, sources say.)
I
don’t see thrift much these days. Maybe it diminished in popularity like the
Chinaberry tree and “nandina” plants, also called “heavenly bamboo” or “sacred
bamboo.”
Some
jonquils grew in our yard. Their yellow blooms let us know when spring was
arriving.
Mother
groomed azaleas in our yard, of course. What proper Southern home didn’t?
My
parents grew a grapevine that twined around a wooden latticework Dad built.
Many farms cultivated grapevines. I suppose our property qualified as a “farm.”
We owned 13 acres. Dad, an 84th Infantry veteran, returned from Germany in
1945, after the U.S. helped the Allies win World War II, and within a few years,
he bought 13 acres of land. I suppose he intended to farm a little, “on the
side.” Before the war, he had worked at Southern Bleachery, a cloth-processing
plant in Taylors, S.C. He returned there after his “tour of duty.”
Our
grapevine grew well and was located not far from the nice barn that Dad and his
father built. It wasn’t weathered and old like most of the barns I saw in our
section of the South.
I
guess Mother asked Dad to dig a hole for a kidney-shaped goldfish pond. (I
don’t think Dad came up with that idea, because of the work involved.) He made
an indention in the earth that measured about three feet across, about six or
seven feet long, and probably two feet deep. He laid a thick layer of cement
into the bottom and sloping sides of that pond. He had no modern plastic liner
to use for our fishpond.
With
my younger sister, Dad, Mom, and Mrs. Miriam Collins (our neighbor), I walked down
into the woods behind the Collins’ house. Among tall pines and undergrowth was
cradled a fair-sized pond with lily pads. Dad waded into that shaded pond and
pulled up some lily pads, along with their roots.
We
thanked Mrs. Collins and trekked up through the forest to her house. At home,
Dad put soil and those lily pads into a wooden box he’d made. The box sat in
the goldfish pond so that when Dad filled the pond, water came up over the box.
The lily pads provided extra oxygen to help fish stay alive. I think Mother
must have found her plan for a fishpond in a magazine or borrowed a plan from a
friend. As far as I know, that pond never leaked and seldom needed water added.
Mother bought a few goldfish in nearby Greenville, and those fish ate
grasshoppers and other insects that ventured into the pond. That pond, a few
goldfish, and those lily pads all thrived.
Mother
wanted a weeping willow tree, and Dad planted it near the fishpond.
There
are reportedly more than 400 species of weeping willows, which can grow up to
ten feet per year. Weeping willow trees originally came from China, and are
symbolic of death, thanks to their weeping forms.
Our
willow’s limbs grew upward but its long, trailing shoots drooped toward the
ground. From each branch grew flat, narrow leaves that pointed toward the sod.
Our tree, as expected, helped our pond exude an Oriental appearance.
That
tree gave an appearance of weeping, but its willowy appendages could cause one
to shed real tears. When willow limbs became “switches,” tears followed. At
times, after my sister and I misbehaved, we had to walk to the willow tree and
each select a switch that would “stripe” our legs. I thought that being forced
to select one’s own switch seemed a bit cruel, but that’s the way Dad often
“spared not the rod.”
Dad
would hold the end of a switch in one hand and pull his other hand down that
limb to tear off the leaves. He was left holding an almost unbreakable “whip”
supplied by nature. A willow switch stings fiercely.
I
like the form of a weeping willow and the slither of sound one can hear as wind
stirs a willow’s limbs and leaves, but I never see a weeping willow that I
don’t think about the sting of a willow switch on a child’s bare leg.
Mother
liked to keep a few houseplants. I suppose I was five years old when my sister
and I first visited Miriam Collins’ house, located just up and across the road
that lay in front of our house. Mother called Mrs. Collins “Miirm,” pronouncing
“Miriam” as a one-syllable word, and called Miriam’s husband “Thern.” Years
later, I realized his name was “Theron.” The couple had four children: two boys
and two girls. The boys were adults and lived on their own, as I recall. Thetwo
daughters, nearly grown, still lived at home with their parents.
Miriam
Collins’ white frame house sat back under huge oaks. The house sported a front
porch, and a “good many” steps led up to that porch where chairs sat. The
living room, clean and old-fashioned, opened into a dining area. Shaded by tall
trees, the house seemed dark inside during morning hours when we visited. Two
large dining room windows let in light for sun-seeking potted plants placed on
tiers along one wall in that dining room. Mrs. Collins sold special containers
and pots for plants. I don’t know if she sold pots to everyone or just to
Mother, but she seemed to purchase extra ceramic pieces, and Mother bought
several “planters” during visits we made on foot to the Collins’ house. (Mother
didn’t have a driver’s license, and we had only one 1951 2-door, black
Chevrolet. We walked to neighbors’ houses, if we went.) I still have two
ceramic planters Mother bought from Mrs. Collins: a donkey that can hold a
small cactus and a beige-colored “Scotty Dog” piece (five Scottish Terrier
images are reproduced on the front of the planter).
Mrs.
Collins had charcoal-colored hair that shaded to gray in places. Her skin was
darker than her mate’s. During one of our visits, Mr. Collins walked into their
kitchen while we stood in the dining area. I’d never seen Mr. Collins up close.
He wore blue overalls and had fair skin that seemed to tint toward orange. I
recall that Mrs. Collins didn’t say much as her marriage partner somberly
looked at us with light blue eyes that appeared to be a lighter, faded version
of the color of his overalls. I don’t recall that Mr. Collins spoke to us, and
he soon left the house.
During
my first-grade year at Mountain Elementary, Mr. Collins disappeared. A day or
two passed, and, while at school, I wondered what happened to him. One day,
after I hopped off the bus and entered our house, Mother told me that some men
saw buzzards circling behind the Collins’ house. They found Mr. Collins’ body
in the woods. I felt sad and wondered if they found him near the pond we had
visited to get our lily pads. I wondered how Mrs. Collins felt about her
husband’s passing.
Once
in a while, I look at the two plant containers that Mother bought from Mrs.
Collins, and I think about Mother and her plants and about Groce Meadow Road.
