Gardening with Lenore

On Sunday we lost my mother-in-law, Lenore. As the family gathers to recall the good times we shared with this ebullient spirit, I’m remembering Lenore as a gardening accomplice.

Lenore and Norm before their grandparenting phase

    When Lenore’s sons started getting married, she and her husband Norm chose a country house that would be grandchild-friendly. It had a washer and dryer, lots of bedrooms, a big open kitchen, and, as a bonus, a large fenced garden with a water line installed by previous owners. Now that I’m hoping for grandchildren, I admire their strategy.

The vast area fenced for a garden

    I was warmly welcomed into the family as their son’s girlfriend, and we spent many summer weekends at the new house. I was excited about the gardening possibilities. Lenore liked the idea of fresh vegetables, but she was less confident about growing them. She had not-so-fond memories of enforced weeding sessions in the hot sun. Her father, who rode the commuter rail from Westchester to his office in New York City, enjoyed cultivating a big vegetable garden during his time off. He conscripted his two daughters for the grunt work.

Not Lenore, but this must have been how it felt

    I, on the other hand, was over-confident. I was sure that on weekend visits, we could fill the large space, perhaps 80 by 100 feet, with vegetables of all kinds and reap a bountiful and delicious harvest. I diagrammed 12 beds, each 10 by 10 feet, and started ordering seeds. I even sent away for asparagus starts. Lenore, always game, was willing to go along. When May came, we visited the garden center together and filled a cart with seedlings: lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants. I remember Lenore commenting to the cashier that the young lettuces were so beautiful, we could just eat them and skip the planting.

    My dad lent us his rototiller, and we used it to prepare our new beds for planting. 

My sister-in-law Liza contemplates the rototiller

Lenore and I chatted happily as we worked side by side along the furrows. I knew she was smart, beautiful and funny. Working with her in the garden, I learned that she was also loving, playful, and generous. By June, we had our seeds and seedlings in the ground and sat back expecting great things.

How we imagined our seedling rows

    If you’ve ever bitten off more than you can chew in the garden, you know what came next. The first year we did harvest quite a lot of vegetables. We learned that weeding was indeed a hard job, despite the mulch I insisted on spreading, and that raccoons knew better than we did when our corn was ready to eat. My attempts at pickling our excess harvest fell flat, but Lenore didn’t criticize. By the third summer, my energy was flagging. I’d provided Norm and Lenore with their first grandchild. Our attention was focused more on him than on the garden.

Lenore enjoying her grandson

    I still appreciate Lenore’s companionship in that vegetable garden. Yes, the plan was far too ambitious and doomed to fail. One of the things I learned from working with her was that, by marrying Lenore’s son, I’d gain the best mother-in-law ever.

Goodbye, Lenore. You were loved.