Avacado

(1980 memoirs)
Once Frankie had coaxed an avacado pit to come out of its shell and sprout to a distance of five feet!  Then it gave up and died.  I think a date followed the same history.

Begonias and geraniums

(1980 memoirs)
Against the window [in Frankie's kitchen] wasa long sturdy unvarnished table bearing up well under a variety of old worn out plants such as geraniums and begonias.  But who could bear to throw them out?

Flowers

(1980 memoirs)
[Chores for the Clapps] might include getting flowers from the greenhouse to the church Saturdays.  By providing flowers every Sunday, they always got their names in the weekly leaflet of the Congregational Church, tho of course it was splendid of them to do it; and tho it advertised, was also costly and I am sure often a lot of work.  The kind of flower and what was ready blooming was often a topic of discussion at dinners.

College girl

(1980 memoirs)
I will say this about her [Lucretia Clapp], she knew how to solve her problems - some of them anyway.  She lived in a great big white house with greenhouse nearby and the gardens and orchards behind.  [By 2010 these had become the grounds of the Ripon High School.]  By keeping on a college girl to work for her room and board, she managed to get her work done without paying for it.

Truck gardener's wife

(1980 memoirs)
I don't know much about those early days.  I was born in 1904 in Fond du Lac -- but some aunt told me about how hard my mother used to work bunching up radishes and onions and other produce in season for my father to take out and sell to his customers.  And the poor girl had a hard time getting him up early, getting breakfast into him, and getting him on his way.

Bean picker

(1980 memoir)
The trouble [with Henry Clapp's bargain] was that Henry was tight and somewhat dishonest.  "An old skinflint," my father called him.  Many times when my father would get up early and go to the garden to work, he would find Henry had gotten up still earlier, and here he was picking my dad's beans to sell for himself.  "What are you doing in my bean patch?" my father would say.  "Why -- why -- I wanted to surprise you!  Yes -- yes -- look at all I have picked for you already."  That story and many like it circulated around our family circles and made us all laugh our heads off.

Clapp's bargain

(1980 memoirs)
In Ripon there were some of [my father's] cousins, Henry Clapp, married to Lucretia, and they had a greenhouse and orchards with cherry and apple trees and also a big garden planted to produce enough to sell.  My father made a bargain with Henry that they would go in together on this, as Henry needed help and Frank had a wife to support.

Flag flower bed

(1993 July, Rueping memoirs)
[Behind the Rueping cottages was the] Flag Flower Bed:  foliage plants, red, white, and blue were used and kept trimmed evenly as the year went on; also flag pole in dark yellow.  Father sent for the correct number of plants and set his best man at it.  The flag was a replica of real one and a picture is in album of family pictures.  I appreciate it more than I did at the time, realizing the math it took.

Bugged begonia

(1993 November)
My cleaning lady saw some bugs on my begonia, and she shrieked, "O!  You can't have this any more."  And took it off.  Does she have the right to do this?  I'm going to tell her she has to doctor it up and return it, and see how she responds.

Greenhouse

(1993 last of July)

Did you know she [Ruth Andrews in Madison] had a greenhouse built? I knew this but can't recall having seen it. I think she was dismayed by it, in that she got more and more seedlings to grow and didn't know what to do with them.

Bella

(1993 August)

There is a large maid here, a little odd, Bella, I think. Many girls who come in exclaim over pretty plants on my window sill; so one day when she came in, I asked her if she would like to water them, and she said, O No - she never went around them.

Frost

(1992 September 22)

For the first time this year WRCO said, "Cover your plants, for it will frost tonight." Mary M, the sage, said, "Not the squash." I wonder if frost has reached you and what Sherry will say.

Bees' nest (repeat)

(1992 August 20)

When I got up from my nap, Mary M took me for a walk around the house. Ah! the flowers she has set out and got started! Now she has the hose, and we do not know what a hole is. Thinking it may be a bees' nest, we let well enough alone.

Bees' nest?

(1992 August 20)

When I got up from my nap, Mary M took me for a walk around the house. Ah! the flowers she has set out and got started! Now she has the hose, and we do not know what a hole is. Thinking it may be a bees' nest, we let well enough alone.

Empty chairs

(1992 July)

Three white chairs set out in front and so far empty. Mosquitoes bite the feet. But they look nice.

Pea pods

(1989 June 26)

Bill brought me some delicious peas which are the kind of which one eats the pods. He says that is the only kind he bothers with any more.

Geraldine's flowers

(1989 May 31)

I have described Geraldine, my previous help, to you - large, some fat, gray hair cut Dutch-boy, blowsy. "Violets!" she would exclaim - "Violets! I used to have 'um - lots of 'um. Got no place to put them now, but I did have," and she waves her right arm to take in quite a space. "My mother now. She had flowers. She used to chew Copenhagen and put it around them. You never seen anything like them blossoms. Oh!"

Monster gift

(1989 November 8)

When Kathryn Bailey went on her porch to get her mail, she was actually horrified to find two big grotesque green squashes Archie had left at the door for her. I advised her to wait until Bob [her nephew] came and let him whack one open with an axe, and she thot she might. I wonder if he will bring one for me. Must have had a good harvest.

Dead wood

(1988 July 8)

This morning 9:30 Bill came with his truck and cut down my redbud tree [transplanted from Kansas], which by itself has cracked off and lay on the ground. He also took dead wood out of lilacs and piled on truck. Then he took a stout rope he had brot along and tied all firmly. I gave him $2.00 to pay the fee at the City Dump, and after a couple of glasses of lemonade and cookies, he was off in 100 degrees.

Delphinium

(1988 June 30)

I like to say, "I must go out and water The Delphinium." It makes me feel so Latin. I don't know what I'd say if I had more than one, though. After all, I am Aquarius.