Subtle lessons from unexpected situations often inspire new gardeners the best.
Some 40 years ago during a radio interview, Marc Cathey, president emeritus of the American Horticulture Society, challenged me to remember the first time in my life someone showed and explained to me something in the garden. It was a mind-opening challenge.
Being raised in diverse gardens by somewhat eccentric gardeners and having spent years in my family’s garden center and nursery, I was exposed to lots of learning opportunities that impact me to this day.
Not so much the professional tips I gleaned from co-workers like how to sharpen my shovel for digging trees efficiently, or classroom facts about nectarines being just fuzzless peaches; I’m thinking “aha” moments from unexpected sources, like my grandfather stepping on pecans to see if they were firm or cracked easily underfoot, indicating mold that saved bending down to pick them up. And learning from my aunt how to fish for doodle bugs with a pine needle.
I distinctly remember the sunny day when I was five and my mother trying valiantly to cellophane over tiny holes in my new beach ball after it was deflated by her prickly pear cactus, then consoling me with how it was the wind’s fault, not the cactus. And when, during a fifth-grade plant studies homework project, I was gifted a potful of a similar thornless cactus with smaller pancake-shaped leaves, which I still have to this day. These experiences whetted my life-long appetite for collecting unique cacti and succulents.
But one of my most vivid early garden memories is from an encounter around my great-grandmother’s large Abelia shrub. While there are several popular compact and variegated new Abelia cultivars, the old-fashioned kind you still see flowering around old homesites is a bit unkempt, always happy for a trim which just makes it sprout more flowering branches. Its clusters of small white or pale pink trumpet flowers, produced nonstop from spring to fall, are surrounded with a pink calyx that remain on the twigs long after the flowers have shed. The shrub is constantly abuzz with various butterflies, moths, pollinating flies, hummingbirds, and one very peculiar critter that led to my first encounter with a real scientist.
When that last one first caught my attention, it actually raised hackles on my arm. As it hovered nonstop around flowers, constantly licking nectar with a long tongue, I couldn’t tell if it was a large bumblebee that might sting, or a tiny black and yellow hummingbird with clear wings.
My horticulturist great-grandmother could have easily told me what it was; instead, she taught me a life lesson by having me catch it carefully in a glass jar and bicycle it a few blocks to the MSU’s county Extension Service office, where a busy ag agent kindly took time to look it up, pre-internet, in his thick entomology book, assuring me that it was a beneficial pollinator worth admiring.
After I raced home to explain it all to my family garden mentor, she dubbed me – a 10-year-old – “Little Professor.” I am certain this brief interaction between garden experts and a little kid inspired me to study horticulture, leading me to eventually work for and retire from the Extension Service.
Oh, the insect turned out to be a clear-winged sphinx moth that looks like a bee but hovers like a hummingbird. And doodlebugs grow up to be iridescent green tiger beetles. And I learned about how to control the pecan disease.
And most importantly, I learned about little shareable moments – never know where your offhand knowledge may lead.
Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to [email protected].
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