WINNEMUCCA - This week-end, I got together with Beth and Becky for the annual pre-dinner conference. That's when we decide who brings what for Thanksgiving. Becky's daughter won a turkey at the Denio Turkey shoot, and nobody can beat Becky's rolls. Beth's bringing mashed potatoes and appetizers.
"And you can bring sweet potatoes," Becky said, turning toward me.
"I thought you didn't like sweet potatoes."
"I don't," she said.
"And I could bring pies," I offered. "I had a bumper pumpkin crop."
"About the pie," Beth said, wrinkling her face. "I'm going to recommend pre-made crusts. They always turn out. And I'll loan you my recipe if you want. Only if you want."
"I'd be grateful for it."
A gardener lives a blessed life. I notice more and more that although I do much of my gardening alone, it's actually a communal activity.
Every year the garden evolves, and this was a particularly ambitious year. I added a windbreak fence and several raised beds. My daughter Lindsey built the fence with me. Beth, and Becky helped out with the raised beds, and when I'm out weeding those beds or admiring the morning glories climbing the fence, I think of the fun we had building them.
Well, I was having fun. They were working.
Some people get into my garden life by proxy. A couple years ago, Becca gave me some blackberries that suckered from her plants. Those blackberries are a delicious reminder of her and of her garden. Someday, if I live long and prosper, my garden will be as beautiful and productive as hers is.
My friend Dixie gave me some grapevines, and I got the overflow when she thinned her iris bed this last year. They are, like Dixie herself, both beautiful and bountiful.
My mother always loved hummingbirds, and whenever I see them chasing each other around the feeder in the yard, or sitting on the clothesline nearby, I think of her. I plant Heavenly Blue morning glories in honor of my grandmother, although mine are not nearly as big and beautiful as hers were.
It takes a lot of know-how even to raise tough plants here, and I've yet to find a gardening book which addresses our growing conditions. We have to rely on advice from fellow gardeners.
For me at least, this means that my garden is not only the plants I grow, but also the people who help me know how to keep those plants alive. It's conversations in grocery stores or waiting rooms, or in line at the bank.
In Robert Frost's poem, "A Tuft of Flowers," he writes of raking hay, and as he rakes, he thinks that both he and the man who cut it earlier work alone. Then Frost notices that mower spared a tuft of flowers. Because they shared the beauty of the flowers, Frost recognizes "a spirit kindred to my own; so that henceforth I worked no more alone."
So here's to all you kindred spirits. This year, when I tuck into that pie I couldn't have made on my own, I'll lift a fork to you.
When Teresa Howell is not waiting for someone to serve her pie, she teaches English at Great Basin College.
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