Passing the Torch

My grandmother is 82 and unfortunately struggling to find the energy to garden this year. Her breast cancer has regenerated in her spine and her lungs and the treatments have caused her to turn to strictly gardening in containers. For my birthday my grandmother ceremoniously passed the gardening torch to me.

This is her box of seeds. The containers are various jam jars, baby food jars, etc. that she cleaned out to reuse. My grandmother is a spectacular woman who was born the year the stock market crashed in a tiny town called Cow Creek, Kentucky. In 1950 she moved up to Michigan to find work and started working at the Willow Run assembly plant (the very same plant where the original "Rosie the Riveter" worked during WWII). But I digress...

The point is she came from very humble means and therefore learned to reuse and save everything and only take exactly what she needed. I know that some of these seeds are from a few years ago and so the germination rates are bound to be quite low, but every time something sprouts I will smile and think of my grandma. I can picture her in the garden diligently collecting seeds to save for the next year's garden.
It makes me sad to know that her garden of which I have such fond memories will be no more, but I'm proud to be continuing those traditions for her in her time of ill health. I will hopefully be bringing her a share of my fresh veggies this year.