"Not before Good Friday"

"Not before Good Friday," was her gardening mantra. 

 

 My grandmother, Joan  (of Joan and Hughsey and the Gin Martinis), had quite the green thumb.  She always maintained an impeccable yard and a beautiful garden.  She attended her Green Acres Garden Club meetings regularly, and their highly coveted "Garden of the Month" sign frequently found itself planted in her front yard.  One of my favorite memories is of the time my father, ever the prankster, "stole" the sign and placed it in front of our house.  The irony was that, at the time, my sisters and I were at a standoff over who would weed our overgrown garden and spread the mulch that had been sitting in bags next to the garage for 2 weeks.  Certain that gardening thieves had stolen the sign for themselves, Grandma immediately called the police and reported it stolen.  Needless to say when she arrived at our house later that evening

(as she did almost every day), she was not amused.

This was her copy of George Fitzley's Growing and Preserving Your Own Fruits and Vegetables that  I now keep in my kitchen

Gardening was a point of pride for my grandmother.  She read books, subscribed to magazines, and attended lectures all about gardening.  She knew her stuff and her marching orders were you DID NOT put any new plants in the ground before Good Friday in New Orleans.  The method to her madness was that by Good Friday the risk of a lingering hard freeze was all but eliminated.

 Each spring, at the first sign of warming weather I always get the itch to head to the nursery and break out the gardening tools, but then I hear her saying those words with her heavy New Orleans accent. "Not before Good Friday."  As far as time lines go, it seems a rather arbitrary day, especially since Easter and Good Friday follow the liturgical calendar and therefore fall on different days each year.  But one thing I've learned is you don't argue with Joan.

It has been a few years now since she passed away, but I always think of her most around Easter time and, of course, Good Friday.  She would always hide eggs in the back yard and the Easter Bunny would always make his way to her house with baskets for me and my 3 younger sisters.  Before we were too old and too cool to appreciate them, she would make us gorgeous smocked Easter dresses with cross stitched collars to go with our new patent leather shoes.

This is me just before I turned 1 on Easter Sunday at my Grandparents' house



Now that I am all grown up with a family and children of my own, I wish William and Henry had gotten the opportunity to meet her.  She would have cross stitched John Johns until the cows came home and probably shown up at our house every evening just as she had done at my parents' for years.   I may never be one tenth the gardener she was, but as long as there are Easter Sundays, there will be Good Fridays and memories of Grandma.

Joan Shall (Grandma)