Mom’s Garden | The Way He Looked At Her

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An excerpt from this story was published in Reminisce Magazine May 2020. 


When I was growing up on the farm in Saskatchewan in the sixties and seventies, my mom’s garden took centre stage. A woman’s garden was a great source of pride and elicited a bit of neighbourly competition. Every summer my siblings and I worked and played in the garden. 

Starting in 1947 and continuing for over fifty years Mom planted her garden in early May. She covered the tiny seedlings with Styrofoam cups with the bottoms cut off to protect them from frost. The Hubs once said it looked like a smurf village.

Gardening in Saskatchewan

There was an area behind the house where, in the early years, Mom had a rose and peony garden. A tire swing hung lazily from a branch of an old maple tree along the lane. We swung and twirled for hours sitting on that old tire.

Mom’s favourite flowers included her precious gladiolus or her “glads” as she called them. She carefully planted each bulb with an empty milk carton around it to protect and support the burgeoning plant. As the season progressed a beautiful array of colours burst forth from the plants. Every fall she faithfully dug up and stored her bulb collection in the root cellar. She had originally ordered the bulbs from the mail order seed catalog. The arrival of the seed catalogue every spring was cause for celebration, as it signalled that another long prairie winter was coming to an end.


Fresh berries from the garden were so delicious, but a lot of work to pick. Gooseberries, raspberries and strawberries always grew in abundance. There was a small orchard in the center of the garden with a variety of apple trees, as well as plums and apricots. In the spring their pink and white blossoms smelt amazing and looked so pretty.


Tomatoes were plentiful, and when the threat of frost loomed Mom picked them. She stored them upstairs in the farmhouse in cardboard boxes covered with newspaper to let them ripen. The ritual of checking the boxes for ripe tomatoes and then canning them went on for weeks.

My parents planted a large patch of potatoes, dug them in the fall and down the chute they went into the bin in the dirt floor root cellar under the house. In the spring, we hauled the remaining potatoes back up out of the root cellar and they were used for seed and the cycle continued.

Mom had a pumpkin patch and we loved to peer through the foliage to try and spot the biggest pumpkins. When the season was ending, we hauled wheelbarrows full of pumpkins into the shop so they could finish ripening. A row of sunflower plants stood next to the pumpkins like sentinels guarding the patch.




Mom grew many other vegetables in her garden including: carrots, zucchini, rhubarb, onions, peas, beans, beets and cucumbers. Dill obligingly sprung up to accompany the cucumbers. Broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage plants were tied closed with rubber jar rings to keep the bugs out. Rows of corn needed to be picked and then shucked out in the barnyard and a big day of blanching and freezing corn awaited us every August.


When I think about Mom’s garden, my fondest memories are the walks we took with her through the garden, eating peas, apples and berries warmed by the sun and using the garden as our playground.

Years later I still marvel at the amount of work Mom put into her garden. The hours she spent planting, watering by hand, weeding and picking. That doesn’t even include the time spent processing the fruits and vegetables. The thing is, I don’t remember Mom ever complaining about doing any of it. What I do remember is Dad coming in from the field and Mom showing him the canning jars she had filled and the way he looked proudly at her with admiration in his eyes.

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