Making Memories. . .

Sitting on the sofa, enjoying the start of my holiday break! My shopping is done, but I have a little bit of sewing to finish up for the girls. OK, I haven’t started yet, but it’s all straight seams, so that’s my project for tomorrow morning. Helping with the projects will be this little lady who has been my sewing companion since, I think, my freshman year in high school, so it’s been a year or two ago! I received her as a gift, and still enjoy her as she sits with me at my sewing machine. Now she’s helping me – literally – make new memories for my granddaughters.

She arrived with a number of sewing pins with colored heads, filling the “pincushion” basket with “flowers.” At the time she first became my sewing buddy, gardening was not anywhere near being on my agenda. In fact, at that time – pre-teen into high school years – helping my mom in the garden was torture, not the sanity-saver it would later become, and still is. Although I learned a lot about gardening from my mother, my love of being able to dig in the life-giving soil grew only after I had children of my own.

My first remembrance of wanting to grow flowers and then vegetables was at the side of my grandfather, who we called Pap. Pap had roses – lots of roses – and spent hours pruning and caring for the flowers. From dark red to pink to yellow to white and cream, he had them all at one time or another. As rose gardens go, it wasn’t huge, with up to fifty rose bushes located around his home and garden, but it was beautiful. Glossy leaves, gently swaying stems of many-petaled blooms, all carefully tended by my grandfather.

In his later years, his body was always stooped, bent from the waist, but always moving, always tending the roses. I learned from him to trim spent blooms “down to the first set of five leaves,” so as to encourage new growth and new beauty from the plants. Now, each time I trim the fading blossoms from my few rose bushes, I hear Pap, passing on his knowledge to me.

And now, sharing space with my sweet little pincushion, I also remember that gardening, like sewing, brings back memories of those who taught me. I share, when I can, my sewing and gardening hints with my granddaughters. Hopefully, they will look back with pleasure and remember to trim “down to the first set of five leaves” to ensure new growth and beauty. We all need a trim from time to time, whatever we are doing, don’t we, to be sure we are always growing, always sharing our beauty with others.

Music and laughter, blessings and hugs.