The pictures above are of my brother Willis and my Daddy, Orville in our vegetable garden south west of our house in the early and mid 1940’s. Willis was in the flower section. Most people planted flowers in their gardens back in those days. The picture of daddy was taken a few years later with harvested tomatoes and peaches from our many peach trees.
Most of the flowers that were planted in our gardens were planted by Daddy, but Mama helped him care for them. Mama’s main gardening was vegetables. She was a bit more practical than daddy.
The vegetable part of the garden was to the lower right, beyond this area. Mama and Daddy both hoed the garden in the cool of the mornings and evenings. We kids helped some, but Mama was always afraid we would cut off or damage one of the plants, so our help was more limited to pulling out the weeds that grew close to the stems where a hoe could not reach.
Note; the water pipe with the tub basin is to the left side of the picture. Water was piped from a windmill which was south west of this garden for watering purposes as well a place to get a nice cool drink for those working in the garden. Water was also hand dipped from the tub to water the garden plants at the far end of the garden. Those end plants did not always get sufficient water that came down from the shallow water ditches that daddy made between the rows.
The flowers in the immediate front of the picture are Rose Moss and a type of Cockscomb. The flowers behind Willis are Zinnias, Hollyhock, Cosmos and other. Daddy hand made the lath fence.
The trees closest to the garden are peach trees. Others were Native Elm, Cottonwood and Catalpa. All of these were started from saplings that Daddy dug from Grandpa Caywood’s farm and from our neighbors. The many peaches trees we had were raised from seeds. Canned peaches were our main source of fruit during the winter. The clings were used for peach butter.
Later on, our garden spot was moved north of our house close to a blackberry patch. I am not sure why because water then had to be bucketed to the garden from our hand pump which was just outside of our house. Gardening today is nothing like back then. Even a hand pushed garden plow was considered a luxury for us back then.
The buildings to the center left are two brooder houses that we lived in for almost two years when we first moved to the farm in 1934. After Daddy built our new two roomed house, the brooder houses were used for Mama's chickens. They were moved from this location to the south side of this garden where they remained until Mama moved away in 1963 after Daddy died in Nov, 1960.
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