Grandmother Davis

 Here is an old photo of my Grandmother Davis standing out in her garden.  I have no idea of the date of this, except that it was probably early to mid 60s, before 1966 anyway.  I believe it was in 1967 when she had her right arm removed due to bone cancer (?).  I was born in July of 68, so her surgery could have been in early 68, I am not sure of the dates.  At any rate, I was just about a year old when she passed.  But my mom always said that she believed Grandmother Davis was partly the reason I turned out left-handed; when she held me in her lap she always used her left hand to move my left hand around, due to her having lost her right arm.  

She was a character, from what I gather from my mother's stories of her.  A devout Christian lady, but still with her quirks and foibles, as we all have.  

She loved her garden; both vegetables and flowers.  I believe her main love was flowers.  She had various blooming bushes growing all over the 5 acres they owned there in CA, as well as bulbs.  I remember several rhododendrons, a rose bush, plenty of daffodils, calla lilies, snow drops, surprise lilies (which my mother always referred to as Naked Ladies, but are actually a type of amaryllis) and many others that I can't remember now.  

Well do I remember some of my mother's stories of my Grandmother Davis and her quirks...most of which I will not share here as it deals with other family members. But one of the stories I remember was of when they had done a butchering.  I think they; my dad, Grandmother Davis and mom (they all lived on the same property, in separate houses) would butcher a beef on occasion.  One summer they had done so and then shortly thereafter, maybe a day or two, my mom said that Grandmother Davis left for a few days to visit other family members further south.  My mom said after a couple of days she went over to Grandmother Davis' house  to check on something and found that she had gone off and left the beef heart and other entrails in the kitchen sink.  Summer weather didn't used to get overly hot there, maybe in the 70s on a super warm day, but after days of just sitting in a warm house in the sink the bovine entrails had to have been awful.  My mom said she was so aggravated but she cleaned it all up.  She said that later upon her return my grandmother thanked her for doing so, but said she had intended on cleaning it up when she got back.  Haha...  I am not sure why she didn't freeze or refrigerate it.  She had the means to do either and, as far as I understand, wasn't the wasteful type.   

Years later, on the same property and in the same house my Grandmother had lived in, I believe I was about 18 or 19 when I took a notion to plant and grow flowers.  I used all sorts of random junky pots and containers that we had all over the place.  I knew absolutely nothing about flower gardening, as my father didn't hold with that at all.  He only encouraged vegetable gardening.  Looking back I wonder if flower gardening only reminded him of his mother, with whom he'd had a tense relationship over the years.  At one point in the midst of my messy attempts at flower gardening he just shook his head and said if I ever wanted to know what my Grandmother Davis was like all I needed to do was look at myself and my flower growing operations.  At the time I didn't know how to take that.  Now, I believe I am pleased that the gardening gene has proven true in my life.  I'd like to think that my Grandmother Davis would be pleased with my garden attempts; both flowers and vegetables.  Some day I believe we will get to discuss it together in person, in a garden beyond this earth.