HARVEY’S GARDEN

When a person goes for an annual check-up, and a physician tells her that her blood pressure is near “stroke city,” health measures are called for. Although the condition could be attributable to diet, lack of exercise, stress and all those lack-of-upkeep body factors, I’m inclined to believe that altitude could be a part of this equation. I mean, as I was brought up to be a flatlander and have been living at 25 feet above sea level for six months, then suddenly transfer to a residence 2000 feet above sea level, I’m convinced that this change alone could cause skyrocketing blood pressure. But, as readers know, physicians like to distribute pills, and that was the suggestion for lowering my soaring blood pressure. 

However, I chose to continue losing weight, an accidental consequence of illness, and to walk daily — not on The Mountain where I live temporarily, but down in the Valley where I can look up toward the hills as I walk rather than looking down my nose at those who prefer treading more stable ground below. I wasn’t excited about walking the Sewanee campus or the Goat Mountain Trail but wanted a new place to “saunter” (in contrast to “sprinter”) until I’d built up enough strength to gain the status of a “walker.”

Pink dogwood, redbud, walking trail

I discovered a 13-acre garden on the outskirts of Winchester, Tennessee, only a few minutes from Sewanee, that offered a meditative trail of slightly rolling landscape edged by large river stones and covered by flowering plants, trees, and large boulders. Also, the garden was empty certain hours of the morning when I liked to walk — preferably not on a full stomach. 

The garden is called Harvey’s Garden and is the handiwork of Handley and Becky Templeton, son and daughter-in-law of Harvey Templeton. Handley and his wife carried out the vision of his father for a contemplative garden. The third time I sauntered in the garden, I met a man walking along, picking up items of trash scattered about the trail. 

“What’s your job?” I asked, and he appeared to hide a smile.

“I’m in Finance,” he said, “and my wife and I created this garden. My name is Handley.”

“Are you the son of John Templeton?”

“No, I’m his nephew,” he replied.

I felt foolish because I’d wrongly assumed he was the yard man. I knew, of course, that when drivers ascend the highway leading from the Valley up to The Mountain at Sewanee what comes directly into their view is the temple at the peak of The Mountain where the Templeton Library and a statue of John Templeton, the famous fund manager, banker, and philanthropist, stands. 

We chatted a few minutes, and Templeton told me about a second garden that the Templetons had established near the Winchester Country Club. I visited that garden the following day, but it lacked the shade and the abundant foliage of the first garden. I “sauntered” that trail also, but today I returned to the first one, and Dr. Sullivan took photographs of some of the more colorful plants. I especially like the red leafed redbud with its heart-shaped leaves, and the lavender rhododendron, along with ginkgo, crepe myrtle, hydrangea and a beautiful horse chestnut tree. Crows in nearby trees followed me on the trail and kept complaining about my invasion of their territory; at one point, diving toward me.

Granite boulder, coral red honeysuckle,
horse chestnut, rhododendron

Although the site is perhaps a fifteen-minute drive down The Mountain, and gasoline prices climb lately, the Valley has become my favorite place to walk. My blood pressure has dropped to within normal range for an 83-year old, thanks to the beautiful site of Harvey’s Garden and a sudden burst of sunny weather. 

LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD

Shelling butter beans

The other day I walked into a vegetable market in Winchester, Tennessee and got excited when I saw a plethora of fresh vegetables and fruit– tomatoes, squash, corn, South Carolina peaches – fresh, mouth-watering food that made me think about my childhood visits to the home of my Grandfather and Grandmother Greenlaw in Franklinton, Louisiana where we had fresh vegetables, including fat butter beans, for lunch all summer. I didn’t see any speckled butter beans in the market, but I probably wouldn’t have bought a bagful because a particular memory of shelling them back in the 40’s suddenly assailed me. Here’s the memory in the form of a short-short vignette:

Grandfather set down two washtubs of speckled butter beans – a Mt. Hermon farmer’s harvest of plenty – on the back screen porch and grinned at us. He had a wide mouth, and his grin covered his entire face. He was hardly ever serious because he said he was a Greenlaw, a bona fide Scot, and Scots were known to be practical jokers.

“Fifty cents each to shell the whole bunch,” he said to me and my brother Paul, as he headed out to sell Fords at “The Garage,” a plebian name for a motor car business, also known as “Motor Sales and Service,” a moniker just a tad above “The Garage.”

In 1943, fifty cents looked like a good deal to us. Paul was ten; I was eight, and neither of us had earned over a quarter for doing chores in our household. We smirked at one another and began shelling.

Four red, sore fingers and four hours later, we had done one tubful. We worked steadily in a silence broken only by the buzz of the sawmill further up 10^th Avenue. Our grandmother stayed in the kitchen next to the porch because she disapproved of Grandfather putting this Herculean project in our hands. The noon whistle whined and died, but no one called us in, and we plodded on, heaping shells on the green painted concrete floor of the porch.

At first, it had been fun to see the fat speckled bean pop out as we peeled back the shell, but amazement quickly turned to monotony. Mutual, fast shelling became a matter of who could lollygag the longest. After all, we were to be paid equal wages, so it didn’t matter who did the most work, Paul said.

My grandfather came home for lunch, patted us both on our damp heads and didn’t offer for us to stop working. I could hear my grandmother in the kitchen admonishing Grandfather about “child labor.” We had begun to sweat heavily, and the beans were early salted. When 4 p.m. showed on the Motor Sales clock that hung on a solid wall leading into the kitchen, we sat staring down at an inch of beans lying at the bottom of the second tub.

Grandfather came home early because he said he hadn’t sold anything except a handful of auto parts that day.

“Well,” he said to my Grandmother, who had finally decided to check on us, “do you need help canning these beans?” He gave us an evil grin.

My brother and I looked at one another and stood up, then left the porch, letting the screen door bang behind us and not looking back at the inch of beans on the bottom of the second tub.

“Fifty cents between you,” he called after us. ‘You didn’t finish the job.”

We sat under the pear tree in the side yard until dark when Grandfather came out to look for us.

“I shelled the rest,” he said. “And I paid myself twenty-five cents for finishing the job for you.” He didn’t bother to smile and turned to go inside where my grandmother was waiting supper on us. I heard him saying something about being a good Baptist and to remember the parable of the workers in the vineyard to my grandmother, who mumbled the words “proof texting.” I went to bed early, my heart filled with spite…and my stomach gnawing with hunger…but not for butter beans.

Paul ended up thanking him, but I quit going down to Motor Sales in the afternoons where I had worked the adding machine, pretending I was selling cars for my grandfather. I no longer wanted to be a businesswoman. It seemed like business people skimmed the best off the bottom of the tub and cheated the ones who did all the labor.

However, three years later, when I broke my front tooth playing croquet on my grandparent’s side lawn and Grandfather Paul had to witness me squirming in a dentist’s chair, he gave me $25 to spend on whatever I liked… and I didn’t have to perform any tasks to earn the money.  

But I have trouble digesting butter beans to this day, especially speckled ones.