By Sandy Scott Watson

My dear husband Jim gifted me the Master Gardener course as part of my Christmas gifts. It has been a desire for many years. I feel like a giant sponge. Sitting in class or studying I am constantly reminded of my father. He always had an incredible garden and could create a positive result with composting.

My dad was born in Coffee County Mississippi in 1925. William T. Scott; WT; Bill or Scotty were his many monikers. His father died when he was two and the struggles began. Grandmother moved to North Alabama with two little boys to be closer to her family and to make things worse the Great Depression began in 1929. Dad survived hard times and eventually moved to Selma where he met my mom. In 1950 he took a job at an Army Post in Maryland as a machinist. Daddy built our house, fished, hunted, trapped and ran a crab line in the salty waters of the Chesapeake Bay, and he gardened! I say he had ‘ten green thumbs!’ Neighbors and friends benefitted from his garden. I remember his tomatoes oh, his tomatoes! I sat many times with my parents snapping green beans. Mother was not one who canned so we had a huge chest freezer, it held many treasures thru the years, baked apples, all sorts of vegetables, venison, beef, fish and sliced peaches, yum.

When my brother Barry was eight or nine years old our dad took him to fish in a contest above Atkinson Dam. He won by catching a huge catfish, full of roe. At the time home sewers fed into the rivers that flowed into the Bay. Thankfully that has been rectified. We did not eat bottom feeders! After the celebration that catfish was buried in the garden because dad knew that fish contained naturally occurring amino acids, vitamins, hormones and enzymes for soil health. He also brought in organic fertilizers like manure and mushroom compost that added the benefit of increasing organic matter in the soil and supporting soil microbes. My father was a self-taught man who loved nature. When I followed him thru the woods, he knew the name of every tree and plant, like ‘crow’s feet’ which is a vine that grows along the ground. We pulled it up to make Christmas wreathes.

I am not certain when I began composting. I think in Madison, Wisconsin. I met a wonderful lady who had traveled to see many gardens of the world. On her property were apple trees. You could pick all you wanted but you had to pick up any fruit from the ground and toss it onto the compost pile.

I have an Aunt Bertha who grew up and has lived on the land in Elmore County all her life. She is a gracious lady who can grow, cook, can or put up anything. Her jams, oh my! On a visit to her home one time she handed me a container of veggie-scraps and asked me to toss it off her porch into her flower bed. I have been tossing mine off the deck ever since. In her gracious southern drawl, she once told me “Sandra, the wilderness will overtake you!” God put Adam into Eden to tend and keep it. How can we do less?

In our short time together, Jim has learned about composting and has tolerated it well. He now saves eggshells and plant scrapes when he cooks. Yes, ladies he cooks and works in the yard!

Life in general keeps me from being in my lovely garden 24-7. God’s creation is far beyond all imagining. Did you know that plants sense gravity? That is why roots grow down!

Sandy Scott Watson, an intern in the 2019 Master Gardener Class, lives in Montgomery. For more information on becoming a master gardener, visit www.capcitymga.org or email capcitymag@gmail.com