Gardening With Grandpa Gus

By Paul Roberts

I have posted pictures in the past of my springtime transition/tradition of moving our house plants from their cozy, warm, space inside the sun room to their perch on the patio. They seem to thoroughly enjoy the five or six months of daily watering, wind, and dappled sunlight they receive each year in that spot. They will likely need some trimming when they come back inside in October. Kind of makes me proud to see how they flourish with some tender loving care. 

This morning as I was finishing up with the project, I found myself reminiscing about my own growth as a grower, as a gardener. I wasn’t always so dedicated. But, I imagine we all take some time to mature enough to properly care for the life in our Creator’s garden. A couple of tales from a few generations back help illustrate my point.

On May 11th, 1888, Eugene Augustus Roberts was born in Boone County, Arkansas. I knew him as Great-Grandpa Gus. His parents were Rial and Martha Roberts, and if any of my daughters had been a boy, her name would have been Rial (Ryal? Rile? - “official” records of the day give a variety of spellings).

Grandpa Gus passed away in 1972. I would have been 12 years old when he passed, and had lived next door to him and Great-Grandma Susie since 1964. One of my earliest gardening lessons came from Grandpa Gus, passed down in the form of one of my father’s sermons. Later, Dad wrote about the experience, saying, 

“In later years we had the privilege of living next door to grandpa and grandma Roberts in Meridian…My favorite story about Grandpa is the time after I had planted a small garden next to his big one; Grandpa was a super gardener. After work one day I went to my garden to check and see if anything had sprouted. As I knelt down looking closely and scratching in the dirt, he was suddenly right behind me and said to me, ‘What are you doing Burt?’ I turned with red face and looked up at him; with a smile on his face he said, ‘Burt you have to believe in your seed.’ This moment was so special to me that it became part of many sermons.”

My own story with Grandpa Gus still gives me the same sheepish feelings that Dad must have felt that day. Grandpa Gus’s flourishing strawberry patch was a great spot for the three young Roberts boys -  Kent, Kevin, and Paul -  to learn how to work hard to earn some money. We spent hours (in my little boy mind) one hot summer morning (I’m sure it wasn’t really that bad) on our hands and knees filling up as many pint-size baskets of those juicy berries as possible, with permission from Great-Grandpa Gus to “eat your fill, boys” while we were working.

The memory is hazy after close to sixty years. I’m assuming Kent and Kevin ate their fair share. I know I ate more than my fair share. The clearest memory is of the three of us walking into great-grandpa and grandma’s house, taking turns presenting our morning’s labor to him as he sat at his kitchen table. Kent likely received a crisp dollar bill for his overflowing flat of fresh strawberries. I’ll wager Kevin traded in his three quarters full flat for three shiny silver quarters. A fair trade in any young boy’s mind. Then it was my turn. I stepped up to Great-Grandpa Gus with one small square green basket partially full of sweet luscious berries. He smiled at the deep red strawberry stains that covered my face and hands, gently patted me on the shoulder, and said, “Why don’t you keep those, take ‘em home and have your mom make you some jell.” I was just old enough to understand that the ill feeling in the pit of my stomach wasn’t only from eating too many strawberries, and that I was the only one responsible for that feeling.

I’m thankful for those moments, both long ago and still today, that help teach me how to grow some wonderful fruit and beautiful flowers in this garden that my Creator calls “Paul’s Life.”

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Can you share a story of someone teaching you any "gardening lessons" throughout your life?