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    A Vermont Gardening Memoir
    A Vermont Gardening Memoir
    A Vermont Gardening Memoir
    Ebook239 pages2 hours

    A Vermont Gardening Memoir

    By Dawn Griffis

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A Vermont Gardening Memoir, is my 5th Memoir it tells how I started learning about gardening in Aynho England as a child. Finally after all our travels we moved to Vermont and ended up opening our own greenhouse business. It describes how we brought English style gardening to New England. There are over 100 colour photos to see how we progressed from England to New England, and all the trials and tribulations that went along with it in the cold north, all topped off by many joys. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDawn Griffis
    Release dateJul 28, 2015
    ISBN9781513016511
    A Vermont Gardening Memoir

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      Book preview

      A Vermont Gardening Memoir - Dawn Griffis

      ––––––––

      Dawn Griffis

      Publisher

      First published 2015

      © Dawn Griffis 2015

      For Mike

      ––––––––

      Cover picture Front porch Clayhill Road Hartland Vermont

      ––––––––

      By the same author:

      Aynhoe Village Life: The Way it Was: Then- Before and Beyond.

      Headington Hill Hall: The forgotten years 1939 to 1958

      Nursing at the Horton: The way it was: When care to the local people really mattered.

      Living and Nursing in America: The way it is and was.

      Contents

      About the author

      Acknowledgements

      Introduction

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      About the author

      I was born, raised and educated in rural England, mainly in Aynhoe and Oxford. I trained to be a nurse at the Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

      I retired from nursing, after 57 years in 2013. I have been married to Mike for over 52 years, and we have two daughters - Jane and Penny plus six grandchildren, and two great granddaughters.

      Mike and I have lived, and worked, in many regions of the United States.  We returned to our beloved England in January 2005, after almost forty years in the States. December 2008 we returned to the United States, because of changes in the family situation there.

      During our time in England, I wrote and published my first two books, and had started on the third. They are all memoirs, but the first three in sequence include stories of other people’s lives, and what they did, during a time now long forgotten. The first was published in 2007, the second in 2008; the third in 2010 and the fourth one in 2012 which if read in true sequence, belongs in second place. They are all available in paperback. All but the Headington Hill Hall one is available in Nook and Kindle. Each is a standalone book, but together they are a memoir of the progression of my life. This book however, covers from 1943 when I started helping in the family garden as a small child, through to 2015.

      Acknowledgements

      ––––––––

      Mike, my husband, is the primary one I need to thank, always being there and supporting whatever I want to do. Luckily he enjoyed this one as well.

      Thanks to all our friends, fellow growers and relatives who helped us with Griffis Gardens. They are all mentioned in the book.

      A very special thank you to Muriel Wells of Blenheim NZ; for doing the initial editing of the book for me; Ian Huckin my long time friend, editor and planner of book design, without him there would be no books.

      Most of all, thank you to George E. Parrish – Gramp, who started me on this journey. Gramp always said he wasn’t a religious person. He did not believe it was necessary to go to a church to be told of God’s wonders, or who he was, it was all around us. He said that the trees, woodlands and forests were Gods churches & cathedrals; we did not need these manmade buildings to be told the obvious and to really look at everything in the world to see their wonders. Just look at the intricacies of leaves, flowers and plants to realise what he has created. As he said; he wasn’t a religious person, but he was probably closer to God as a believer. He taught me to appreciate the wonders of the world

      Introduction

      This, my fifth book, is another memoir. For the most part it was fun to write, because it was a time both Mike and I look back on with fond memories; but the ending was no fun to live through or write about!

      It starts with my introduction to gardening, by my family, at a very young age. Some was very positive and I was taught well. Many of the old skills are not used today. There was also a negative side to it, that convinced me I had not inherited my Grandfather’s gardening skills, and I was destined to have the awful ‘brown thumb’! Because of my belief of having limited gardening skills, I needed to plant way more than I’d ever need; therefore ending up with more plants than any one family could use. Added to that, the obsession I have of not killing anything, led to problems. This eventually brought about some of the happiest times for Mike and me, then, in the end, one of our saddest times.

      ––––––––

      Not that I was accomplished at it in my childhood years, but I was always fascinated with gardening and growing things. My grandfather, George Parrish, seemed to be able to make anything grow, and he would patiently tell me all of his tips, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

      In 1943, I was 3 years old and it’s just about the earliest time I remember spending in the garden, behind the house with Gramp. He had, what today would be classified as, a very small cottage garden, but he used it to its full capacity. He did have an allotment in the village, which went with my parent’s house. With Dad away at war, and Mum busy hairdressing, Gramp planted it for both of our families, to use for our vegetables. He also kept his pigs up there, in a pigsty, which used to be part of his father-in-law’s property. He treated the pigs as if they were his pets, calling them Sally and Sarah, and could never be present when it was time for them to be slaughtered. He had no problem eating the meat after the deed was done; he just couldn’t be a part of it!

      In the allotment, he grew things that needed a lot of space, such as; potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers, onions, runner beans and peas. I rarely went there, other than to scratch the pig’s backs with a birch broom- they loved the feeling on their backs. Apparently, before he got the allotment, when his children were young, he tried to squeeze everything in his small cottage back garden. It was probably all vegetables - no flowers, except for the climbing rose on the fence between him and neighbours.

      One family story, told about those early times, was when Walt, his 4th son, had brought home a fledgling Jackdaw. The Jackdaw spent most of his time on Gran’s shoulder, but would make side trips to the garden when the runner beans were in flower, as he found them to be a delicacy. This was also his undoing. Gramp sold him to the fishmonger that delivered to the village. He had told Gramp that he was looking for a Jackdaw. He willingly sold it to him. When he came round the next week he tried to sell or give him back. He said: Did you know he eats runner bean flowers? Gramp said, Aye. the

      fishmonger’s response was, You rotten bugger!

      By the time I was old enough to help in the garden; it was a combination of flowers, shrubs, fruit, vegetables and mint. The garden was at the level of the upstairs, and was reached by steps up from the washhouse. After the war, Den, their youngest child, opened an access to it from the upstairs level.

      To the right of the steps was a small bed, which had a fence with a climbing rose, it went the full length, separating the garden from the neighbours. He planted it there in 1913, when they moved into the house, and it was still going well 93 years later, when the house was sold after Den and his wife Kath died.

      In the bed to the right was mint, then flowers. In the spring it was daffodils and tulips, and the rest of the summer, different annuals. About a year after the war, Maurice, Gran and Gramp’s second son, and his family, came down from Croydon for the day, on a Sunday. The rest of the family came over to see them, from the different villages where they were living. Gramp was telling them all what a bumper crop of tulips he expected to have bloom. He said they were all loaded with buds. June, my sister, who was almost four at the time, had disappeared. When she came in from being outside, she had her hands full of something. Holding her skirt up on her frock, she proudly showed Gramp what she had. She had picked all the buds off of the tulips to give to him so he could show them to everyone! All Gramp said was, My poor bloody tulips! They all went up to the garden in the hopes there were some left on the plants, but there was not one left!!

      On the other side of the path, was a small, foot-high stone wall, which retained the main bed. In the front, were the same plants as the one opposite, without the mint and immediately behind those were four gooseberry bushes. Gramp taught me how to pick the sweetest gooseberries. I needed to sit under the bushes, being only 3 years old, I fitted under there, and picked the red ones; the green ones above were bitter and used for pies. The red ones were also squishy and would pop open easily.

      Behind the gooseberries were four standard roses – his favorite was the one on the far right. He called it a cabbage or Christmas rose, and it bloomed late in the year, frequently into December. Behind the

      roses were his vegetables. They were there, so it was easy for Gran to harvest what she needed, including tomatoes and onions. It was here he grew his shallots - lots of them, because Gran used them for making pickled onions. They were the crunchiest I have ever eaten, and she said it was her mother’s recipe. I thought the shallots were fascinating, the way they grew. He would plant the first one, and from that one they would form like a nest, very close to the surface. When it was time to harvest them, he would just pull them up, and lay them on top of the ground to dry out. Then, when he deemed they were ready to braid for storage, he would show me how to do it. Using the long dried stems for the braiding and leaving the shallot out in front of the braid they looked much as the garlic braids of today. He would then hang them in a cool darkened area for storage until Gran was ready to pickle them. Usually they were stored in the

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