Cindy on May 19th, 2011
It was then I discovered the secret known to all gardeners: Nature has the power to heal us when words cannot.”
While the nonstop rain is dampening spirits here in southeast Michigan, I have to admit the soggy soil has produced my best fern crop yet. Excerpted from Writing Home, the following essay was first published in Better Homes & Gardens’ County Gardens magazine in 1994. It was picked up by Reader’s Digest the following year, and is a tribute to one of the most influential people in my life ….
Grandpa’s Ferns
My grandfather was the proverbial Scottish curmudgeon, born and bred on a farm in the Orkney Islands. In his last years, his hearty soul hardened a little more; he often barked at the postman and guzzled whiskey from a bottle he insisted on hiding behind the dining room curtains.
But Grandpa had a soft spot or two. One was for me, and the other was for his garden, a veritable jungle of ferns, which, with a battalion of lilies-of-the-valley, hugged the side of his garage.
No other gardener in his west Detroit neighborhood could lay claim to such a crop. Green, tall, and primordial, the ferns had been growing in his backyard for decades. Too modest to call himself a gardener, my grandfather thought of himself simply as caretaker of his ferns. Like Grandpa, the plants were survivors.
I’ll always associate ferns or “fairrrns,” as he pronounced them, with that durable old Scot and the restorative process of grief we experienced together.
I was nine years old when his wife, my favorite grandmother, “passed on,” as Grandpa reluctantly explained to those who called for her on the phone. Her death broke our hearts that July, during one of the most humid summers I remember.
Grandpa couldn’t put his sorrow into words. He’d spend hours in his recliner, staring out at the living room in stony silence, listening for the echoes of a voice he’d never hear again. Still, young as I was, I knew the moment he began to retrieve his old spirit: I heard him thump out of his recliner, then hobble out to the screened-in porch and into the yard, where his neglected ferns waited.
The whoosh of the garden hose pierced the heavy stillness of the evening. And there my grandfather stood, as he had stood every summer since he had retired, watering his mighty kingdom of ferns. Slipping through the screen door, I ran barefooted across the lawn and joined him.
I inhaled the scent of the fern bouquet, a fragrance like moss in the woods after a warm rain. “That’s what the word ‘green’ would smell like, if it had a smell,” I told Grandpa. He nodded in understanding, then retreated to another memory.
For what seemed like hours, Grandpa and I stood in silence, arm in arm, taking turns with the hose and watching the ferns bow and sway under the water’s spray. I know we both were thinking of my grandmother and how much we missed her, though neither of us could speak her name aloud. It was then I discovered the secret known to all gardeners: Nature has the mysterious power to console us when words cannot.
Not long before my grandfather sold his house and moved into an apartment, my mother had the foresight to ask him for a few of his ferns. Treasuring them like heirloom silver, my parents and I planted and nurtured the ferns, and carefully took a few with us every time we moved. Over the years we watched them unfurl between rocks and next to porch steps. And we gave them to friends who appreciated them.
Ever since I married and left my parents’ home more than twelve years ago, my own little family and I have owned three houses. At each one, I’ve left behind the green legacy of my grandfather’s ferns.
If it’s possible to inherit an affinity for gardening and an appreciation of the natural world, then these were my gifts from Grandpa. I never mastered his business skills, and if he were alive today, I doubt he’d understand my poetry. But I think he would approve of the hours I spend with my hands in the soil, sorting out my life’s complications with pruning shears and a hand trowel.
Each summer, as the ferns in my yard multiply and flourish, I often slip away to my garden to spend an evening deep in quiet ritual. Waving my garden hose over the delicate fronds, I marvel at how well they have endured so much change and the passing of so many years.
And I always think of Grandpa.
–”Grandpas Ferns” is also included in At Home in the Garden (2009; Guideposts), an anthology of American gardening essays. Photos by Cindy La Ferle —
Cindy on February 27th, 2011
Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” ~Jane Howard
It’s not always easy to be a family. For starters, our troubled job market makes it nearly impossible for relatives to live in the same community — or the same region. And even if they do live nearby, work and other obligations can make it a challenge to forge satisfying connections or offer help when it’s needed.
Earlier this month, my mother was finally sent home after spending two weeks in the hospital and another two in nursing rehab. Getting her settled has taken a team of visiting nurses and a physical therapist — and lots of family support. This week’s column in Royal Oak Patch tells the story of how my son’s surprise visit helped us “bring Grandma back.” Please click here to read it. –CL
Cindy on February 17th, 2009
There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (Letters)
Lately I’ve noticed a lot of magazine articles touting the medicinal wonders of tea, but I don’t need to be persuaded. While I still rely on strong black coffee for my morning jump-start, I’m primed for the pleasures of tea by the time my workday winds down.
Unlike coffee (tea’s rich but nerve-racking cousin), tea is a soul-soother. Whether you prefer the delicate jasmine aroma of Earl Grey, or the spicy citrus bouquet of Constant Comment, one cup is enough to transform the dismal hour between four and five o’clock into an uplifting occasion.
I can’t pour a teapot without remembering my paternal grandmother, Robina Scott, who grew up in rural Scotland, then immigrated to this country in the 1920s. A lifelong tea drinker, Grandma Ruby taught me the grown-up custom of “taking tea” when I was a child.
To a five-year-old whose parents drank coffee, tea rituals seemed wonderfully prim and sometimes a little exotic. According to Ruby’s native Orkney Island folklore, reading tea leaves was a reliable way to forecast a person’s future. Following old-country custom, she would interpret the various shapes of leaves left in a cup, then predict weather conditions, the health of an ailing relative, the sex of an unborn child, or even the arrival of a love letter.
But my grandmother never took fortune-telling seriously, nor was she a British purist who insisted on using loose tea in a metal infuser or strainer. At my urging, in fact, she’d generously stock her kitchen canister with Red Rose tea bags after I had pilfered all the collectible dinosaur cards from the box. As surely as I can spell brontosaurus, I can still picture the floral-print housedresses Ruby would wear when she “put the kettle to boil” and rolled great masses of dough for her perfect apple pies. During my weekend visits, I was always allowed to make my own cinnamon-sugar strips from her leftover pie dough.
“Use a bit less o’ the sugar, dearie,” Ruby would scold. “And don’t eat the dough before it’s done!”
While the pies baked, Ruby and I sat at her kitchen table, dipping and steeping our tea bags until the water in our steaming cups turned amber. Sometimes we talked between sips; mostly we stared quietly out the kitchen window and watched the sparrows, our silver spoons breaking the reverie as they chimed against cup and saucer.
As my grandmother liked to remind me, tea had Oriental origins but was a British import to the early American colonies. As most of us recall from our grade-school history classes, it was heavily taxed by the monarchy and eventually incited the boisterous Boston Tea Party of 1773. Since then, our country has harbored a stubborn preference for coffee.
A mug of coffee is quick, feisty, and all-American — easy to consume on the run in disposable cups.
Tea, on the other hand, requires that we sit down long enough to assemble its various accoutrements. Drinking tea entails a fussy battery of saucers, spoons, bags, lemon wedges, and pots with lids, not to mention the optional milk, honey, or sugar. Which is why most waiters don’t cater to tea drinkers; they think we’re a high-maintenance bunch and would rather not be bothered with our hot-water refills.
But there’s another revolution brewing here. Researchers claim that tea, especially green tea, is naturally laden with antioxidant properties that promote good health. A survey conducted by The Tea Council in Great Britain reported that drinking four or five cups of tea per day “may have a beneficial effect on high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure,” and may reduce the incidence of certain cancers.
If Ruby were alive today, I doubt these new-age health claims would have impressed her. The real merits of tea, as we both discovered years ago, are tied to its soothing, soul-filling rituals. — Cindy La Ferle
While the nonstop rain is dampening spirits here in southeast Michigan, I have to admit the soggy soil has produced my best fern crop yet. Excerpted from Writing Home, the following essay was first published in Better Homes & Gardens’ County Gardens magazine in 1994. It was picked up by Reader’s Digest the following year, and is a tribute to one of the most influential people in my life …. 
The whoosh of the garden hose pierced the heavy stillness of the evening. And there my grandfather stood, as he had stood every summer since he had retired, watering his mighty kingdom of ferns. Slipping through the screen door, I ran barefooted across the lawn and joined him.
