through time and space

So I got an email from my Uncle Mike yesterday.  Uncle Mike has shown up here on Oliveknitting before.  You might remember he's the one who has a nose that resembles my dog, Q.  Mike and I don't always see eye to eye on everything (maybe because I compare his facial features to that of my dog?) but that's ok because as of the past few years, we've found our common ground.  Quite literally.  We've bonded over our vegetable gardens.

Uncle Mike is the only one of my grandma's 4 children who seems to have inherited her love of growing food.*  Actually, I don't know if my grandma really loved gardening.  She did it because that's what one does - one has land, one uses it to grow food.  Particularly when one is newly married, in the 1930's and one's husband has been laid off.  It's just what one does.

I have really fond memories of helping grandma pick beans and then sitting on her porch for hours snapping the ends off of them (ok, it probably wasn't hours, but when you're 8 it feels that way).  And I don't know what grandma did to her swiss chard but that shit was GOOD!  It was probably the oregano.  That also came from her garden.  I don't remember the oregano but according to Uncle Mike she had a particular variety (that can't be found any more...at least not by Uncle Mike) that she had planted who-knows-when-ago and that just kept coming back every year.  Mike harvested the seeds for his own garden.  This is his harvest this year drying in his garage.

In his email, Mike asked me if I'd like some of seeds from this oregano next year for my orto.  Are you kidding?!  F*#& YEAH!  Grandma and Grandpa are sadly gone.  The little house they shared for like 80 years has been sold.  But through time and space the oregano lives on.  

I'd like to suggest to all my Serpe relatives that we get some seeds from Mike so we can expand grandma and grandpa's garden to Elkhorn, Lake Geneva, Hampshire, Atlanta, D.C, Seattle, Maberga.  That's a nice thought, no?

*No disrespect to your garden, Dad.  I'm sure both those tomato plants you have are looking beautiful.