good evening Thank you again for
participating in my oral history
interview This is the second of a set of
a few interviews that I will be doing
for my interviewing class Today I want
to discuss one of your hobbies gardening
All my life you've kept amazing flower
gardens and had exotic plants I want to
learn more about what got you interested
in gardening
So I'm going to ask you a few opening
questions Uh what got you interested in
gardening
My parents and my
grandparents I
always worked in the garden We always
had a garden as a
family growing up
And my
grandmother had a garden that she
would grow all of her own
food and can it or freeze
it and that is what we would eat there
all winter
So she also grew a lot of
flowers and I got very interested in all
the different flowers she grew and just
really loved flowers and having my hands
in the earth
Um when did you start your first garden
of my own Yes of your own
A vegetable garden or a flower garden Um
either or I was thinking more of a
flower garden
Um
thinking thinking
So
the first
place I probably had my own flower
garden was when I lived
with my first husband's
family before I graduated high school
So I was 18 or
19 and my grandmother
uh was
ill and wanted
to get me starts from her different
flowers and Aunt Monica
Okay Um what do you remember what kind
of flowers they were That's what I used
to start my first flower garden
Um
irises
coline and
um
pineies
daffodils a lot of pretty flowers
Yes
Um so now I'm going to move on
to like the more like core questions for
the interview Um what was your first big
memory when it uh comes to gardening
That could be vegetable gardening or
flower gardening
It would
be
that at certain harvest
times at grandma's
house everyone
was
helping Not
that I would ever not want to help but
You were expected to
help shelling limema beans snapping
green
beans Um because the green beans were
getting canned water bath
canned and the lima beans would get
blanched and frozen
But my earliest memories of gardening
would have to be
that Thank you Mom Um so who is someone
I know you kind of mentioned this in uh
the like our opening questions but who
is someone who nourished your love for
gardening
Definitely my grandmother Virginia Funk
My
paternal
grandmother
Um what is one of your favorite plants
to
grow One of my
favorite plants to
grow is knit
There are many different kinds of mint
and
um what you call like uh lemon balm
I know you've always had patches of it
somewhere around the house It's fairly
hardy So that
means you know at the earliest times and
the latest times there's always mint
It's very good to put in tea and stuff
too
Yes it makes
wonderful addition to your tea And some
of it you just I mean the lemon bomb is
quite
medicinal and it kind of grows like a
weed in Chase Town Ohio
I don't know what about the
soil here that it just really loves but
I have recently thought
of getting some soil
tests of different to see what's going
on with the soil out here
I feel like um that's something I've
never done and I'm just kind of
interested in it
See what different minerals are in the
um that are in our soil and stuff
Right And also
um acidity is a big thing
Because it also that acidity can plays
in part with what plants you can grow
there Correct
Right It
does Certain plants
prefer a high
acid soil which is what I think we have
here
probably all from all the farming and
stuff because this is all farmland
Um so moving on to my next question It's
kind of similar Um what is one of your
most exotic plants that you've owned
Exotic meaning like the most unique or
from like another part of the world I
brought
a They have them in all
the gift shops and
things in
Hawaii A
stick of
plumeriia and I got two of them and I
grew them into beautiful trees
I really nurtured those and drugg those
around with me to many different homes
I know you uh were they with the batch
of tropical trees that you had the other
ones like the um
um no they
um died
in
maybe let's
see probably about 02
to they got some kind of a strange
fungus
Oh okay
But I by the time I realized what was
going
on because they
also there was an incident with your
older
brother
Um they were just recovering from that
when they caught a fungus
much like one that our pine tree caught
or you know something similar Similar
Yes It actually just
uh turned
the it's a
barky
tree It doesn't really get ranches It's
all
bark And um I mean it just turned to
mush
Oh that's really upsetting
Oh it
was
Um similar to that um what was the
longest that you've kept the same plant
for The longest time like that you've
had the same
flower or
tree I
had a couple of those hibiscus trees for
over 20 years
Wow that's a really long time
Yeah And one I had gotten from a lady at
work and it had been her grandmother's
So those hibiscus trees just say small
like that all their lives don't they
I mean I cut them back but they're more
of a I think they're more of a shrub
than a
tree And they're from a tropical climate
so I remember you'd always have to lug
them
out during the uh during the summer and
lug them back in during the the fall
right
Um and
then here uh I'm here's my final
question Uh what year garden were you
the most proud
of This can be like a flower garden or
vegetable garden or just a mixture of
both
I mean but it was a lot Your dad's
vegetable garden his last one that he
grew was absolutely beautiful It was
perfect
Um
but the first few years we lived here
um
2008 2009 then probably around
200 was
probably the best
flowers I ever
had I had flowers around each one of
those trees out in the front
yard Just like 2 feet of flowers all the
way around them
Yeah You sprinkled It was like a bunch
of wildflower seeds wasn't it
Well yeah butterfly garden type
seeds
cosmos and
um
daisies Uh sweet
William some
uh
flax is a very beautiful plant
Um so was there any particular reason
why you were so proud of that garden
I would have to
say just the variety of
things and
still being able to just put a lot more
work into it than I'm able to now
And it was just you know so much bigger
I had flowers
everywhere But
now I have more perennials going
strong than I ever
have
So I mean now's a good time too
cuz all and all the perennials are nice
and big like the rose bushes and stuff
right I've got that one red knockout
rose is
just that's a happy place to be planted
no matter what I've had planted right in
that spot
And um I mean it's going to take a
little
time because we had kind of a harsher
winter than usual for things to pop back
up this
summer But we should have three
beautiful butterfly
bushes Had those for a long time too
Yes we have
Um the one that is out by our
um
stump is actually from dad's house in
Lynchber nearly 20 years ago
Right
And you know I could take you around and
show
you each thing that I planted the first
year we lived here
I'm sure it was a lot of the tulips and
bulbs and stuff because a lot of those
take sometimes years to come up Like you
got to plant them the winter before
right
Well that concludes all the questions I
wanted to ask you Uh thank you again for
participating in this interview Mom Um
your gardening has always been a big
part of my
life Uh and during my life I've always
been interested in learning where that
love for gardening came from
It was nurtured very sweetly by my
grandmother
She would say "Oh look at that tiny
little
flower." I
mean I try to do that for my
grandchildren and I'm glad to know that
I did it for
you Thank you for having me Thank you
Mom
You're welcome
