A Garden of Memories

I like cool weather. I would rather have a chill wind and have to wear a jacket than deal with feeling sticky and sweaty in hot weather. Although winter is not my favorite season...mostly because winter seems lonely and stark. Even the trees that I look upon during those times are empty and gray.

When Spring comes along, the flowers start to bloom and in some ways it invigorates me as well, reviving me from my winter slump.

The plants grow, the fruits appear, and the greenery is divine.



This year our backyard sprang to life all of a sudden.



We had a bumper crop of apricots this year although we're still waiting for the peaches to ripen. We even found a couple cherries hiding out in the trees...

The kids planted all sorts of things...beans (purple, yellow and green), cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, corn, radishes and sunflowers. I have green onions, peppermint and snow peas.





Every time I'm in the backyard trimming trees or picking off bugs, I'm taken back to my childhood where I remember my halmoni (paternal grandmother) sneaking fish bones into the dirt below her sesame plants, picking rocks out from among the carrots, and caring for an apple tree that only produced the sourest of apples. I remember my mother picking off worms from her tomato plants with chopsticks, feeding her rose bushes each year, and her delight when they bloomed and could adorn our home. I even remember my grandma (maternal) pulling meyer lemons from her bushes near the bright orange nasturtiums, and complaining about the deer who liked to sneak into her backyard and eat the plants.

It's a garden...but it's also a place to build memories. So as our plants grow, I hope my children will also take away some vivid memories of their own, warmly carrying them into the next generation.