Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
The Farmer’s Almanac says we still have a few days to go before the “average” last spring frost date in eastern New Mexico.
If you’re interested in specifics, it says Clovis folks should be safe after Saturday, while Portales gardeners are in the danger zone through April 23. Over in Elida, the Almanac says the average last frost isn’t until April 30.
But this balmy spring has plenty of us outdoors with visions of gardens dancing in our socially distanced brains.
I’ve been reminiscing about the best garden of my childhood. It belonged to Parker and Bobbye Woodul.
Parker and Bobbye were dear friends of ours. Their home in Portales was a regular destination for us, and we shared many a memorable meal together.
The Wooduls had several things we envied: A basement, a velvet lawn with no grass burrs, and a lush garden that thrived inside the protection of a tall cinder block wall.
When they invited us to town for supper during spring or summer, my brothers and I would race straight to the back yard and quickly discard our shoes. The Wooduls had barefoot grass.
Our mother fought grass burrs and goat heads like a warrior, but a yard carved from a cow pasture had no chance to stay sticker-free. The same was true of our own sprawling garden. Only a fool would cast off shoes in these places.
But the Wooduls’ back yard and garden? That was another world all together.
Even though it’s been decades, I remember sitting on the cement back steps of the house, kicking off shoes and peeling off socks to leave by the door.
A few steps across the flagstone patio and our toes sank into cool, butter-soft grass that led all the way to the edge of the garden.
Our somewhat neglected home garden usually had an assortment of the fundamentals — black-eyed peas, pinto beans, tomatoes, corn, squash.
The Wooduls had all of those, too, of course (I mean, some things are sacred), but the ruler-straight rows in their garden flourished with crops we had never seen growing before: spinach and cabbage, brussels sprouts and garlic, broccoli and eggplants.
Grape vines crawled up the cinder block walls along the south and west walls, and jewel-red currants dotted bushes nestled by the house.
For country kids, it was our very own garden of Eden.
We would stop playing long enough to feast on banquets prepared in Bobbye’s kitchen, often featuring vegetables that had been picked just before our station wagon pulled up in the driveway.
Then, after supper, it was back to the yard — even after dark — playing until our bare feet were numb with cold and damp with dew.
Bobbye died in 1999 and Parker in 2004, so it’s been a good many years since those fine evenings in my favorite back yard.
The house is still there. When I drive past, I picture that back yard and garden as it looked in my youth, filled with grape vines and currants and a farmer’s market worth of vegetables.
I hope it still has barefoot grass and I hope there are still country kids who visit.
And when they do, I hope they still abandon their shoes first thing, like we did, and then run like the wind as the soft green grass tickles their toes.
Betty Williamson is riding the nostalgia train this week. Reach her at:
