Grammy Pearl's Garden
Leominster, Massachusetts


by Jean LeBlanc

I spent much of my childhood (the 1960s and 70s) at my grandparents' house in Leominster, Massachusetts. Pearl and Paul Raatikainen were the quintessential grandparents: Pearl baked, knitted, crocheted, and sewed; Paul could build a snow fort in the back yard or play game after game of checkers. And then there were the gardens. Vegetables of every shape and size, raspberries and blueberries and rhubarb – but it's the flowers I remember most vividly.

I grew up in a world of sunlight and color. Spring was a time of dewy lilacs, the yard filled with scent as well as with deep purples, creamy whites, French blues. Then, in another corner of the yard, peonies would bloom. I had a favorite shady hiding place beneath a forsythia bush. Also each spring, I would find a delicate carpet of bluets at the edge of the woods; I was sure Grammy Pearl had planted these, too. Summer was a blur of iris, hollyhocks, glads, lilies, sunflowers, flowering shrubs, climbing roses.

How did Pearl (who was 60 when I was born) care for all these gardens? I ask myself that every time I feel defeated by the weeds in my little perennial borders. But I'm thankful for the gardening gene passed down from Pearl to my mother to me, and for a childhood filled with flowers.

by
Jean LeBlanc

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