Labor Day weekend is upon us. In my experience Labor Day used to mean a lot of work and a lot of fun. My mother and father and I should say everyone in my family including cousins and in laws and outlaws would be a part of the giant pasture party of the year. For 13 years we would begin preparing two pigs and a goat to cook over a slow spit open fire the night before the big shindig. We had a low fire under a swing set with lots of firewood stacked for the 24-hour cook. Once the coals were ready, we would butterfly the pigs and goat with a hog wire cage around each one so we could hang them vertically from the top bar of the swing set.
We had a small motor that slowly turned the baskets, so the meat was evenly cooked. Us youths would be in charge of staying up all night making sure the fire stayed hot enough and that there weren’t any fires from the fat drippings. We had a blast, being ordered to stay up all night and being the heroes the next morning when our parents would bring us some breakfast out to the cook area and to check our work to make sure we weren’t clowning all night. We were but we got the job done.
Around noon on Labor Day or the Sunday before, the guests would begin arriving. Everybody brought a covered dish that they loved to serve. We think some of the parties had about 500 people milling around our pasture. The shady woods next to the field where the bands would set up is where most people hung around. We had cattle troughs full of ice and kegs of beer, tables of covered dishes and an open bar. My parents would get T-shirts and bumper stickers made mentioning the Cochon De Lait party with a theme for every year. I think one of my cousins kept a T-shirt from each event. I’d love to see them; my memory is a little blurry after all those years.
That party would go on into the evening. We just hoped and prayed that everyone would make it home safely. These were the days before it was so easy to get into trouble driving around after one of those parties. It was also during the days when we didn’t give much thought to hydration. I don’t remember us ever giving much of a thought about serving or drinking water on the hottest afternoon of the year. I don’t know how we used to survive.
We stopped on the 13th year after the party just got too big and it began to feel a little out of control as we began noticing that we didn’t recognize many of the people attending. The word had gotten out about the party and the open invitation that seemed to come along with it. We had to shut it down before someone got hurt or in trouble, fun while it lasted.
This year Mimi and I are very excited to have gotten invited to one of our favorite families who now live outside of Nashville. This incredible family, Adam and Christina and their three boys, have created a spot for themselves that we can’t wait to see at the stage they are in now. They have built a great farmhouse on 17 acres with a garden that blows my mind. They grow most of what they eat. They have llamas, chickens and some dogs for the boys to learn the basics of taking care of plants and animals. The boys are homeschooled, and I have to say learning about the important things in life.
They have a swimming pool, a greenhouse for starting their seeds in and a grape orchard that produces enough grapes to sell to a winery close by. We can’t wait to immerse ourselves in their world for a few days. We will be adding roll up curtain walls to his greenhouse that we, as a family, helped him build last year. We like to have a project to keep us occupied when we go to visit someone. Adam lived across the street from us when we lived in a neighborhood in Madison. When Adam was in junior high, we hired him to work at our garden center. He worked on and off for us over the next few years until it was time for him to head to Starkville to get his degree in horticulture and begin his career in agriculture. We met Christina when they met and were close with them all the way through their courting days until they got married and began their wonderful adventure together.
We can’t wait to spend our “Garden and Gun” weekend with them. We will be celebrating Christina’s birthday and all the other things that we have to celebrate together about. Mia will be there with Cody just a month before they get married and if Max and Madeline can make it, we will be celebrating their one-year anniversary. I will be surprised if everyone will be able to leave their busy work schedules, but we will give it a shot; if not this year, then perhaps the next. We are going to try to get together as a family every year besides holidays. It gets more complicated the more people we add to our family.
It feels like we kind of round a corner after Labor Day. The temps don’t change much but the calendar sure looks good. Something about seeing September on the calendar gets my juices flowing. Change is in the air, back to school pressure on the roads, football weekends are cranking up, pumpkins and mums are at the grocery stores, a little early but the message is there. The giant mums that we grow at our greenhouses are budding nicely and we have already started bringing up to the retail area for those who want to enjoy the entire bloom process. It is fun to watch the buds crack open, then go into full bloom and run the entirety of the bloom process until they are finished and it is time to replace them with some winter hardy plants.
We have planted marigolds by the thousands for those who want a plant that blooms a little longer than a mum. We have begun planting dianthus, snapdragons, foxgloves and a lot more. Next week we will begin planting pansies and we will continue planting pansies deep into October. I’ve lost track of how many pansies get planted in this six-week period. John, Luke and I will spend every Monday filling pots with soil on our conveyers and getting them laid out on tables back at the growing operation. Fall crop time is my favorite season at the greenhouses because pansies generally bloom at the same time, so the sea of color is spectacular. We have hundreds of thousands of pansies blooming at the same time and it’s hard to stop taking pictures.
After the pots are filled with soil we wet the soil, dibble the soil, put the seedlings in the holes, water them in and give each pot a colorful info tag. We always hope to get each week’s round of seedlings planted before the week is over so we can start on next week’s pot filling, so we don’t begin to fall behind. We do have flat filling machines and conveyer belts and racks that roll to make it more efficient, we are not up to snuff with some of the latest inventions, but we get by. We like our system, and it works for us, and we believe we have some really great looking plants to offer our community.
Another change that comes with September is that our Bonus Bucks program starts over. People came in this past July and August to spend their Bonus Bucks like there was no tomorrow. We were so busy this July and August, normally a nurseryman’s slowest and most dreaded months, the Bonus Bucks have created an exciting and fun atmosphere. It’s fun for the staff and the customers to come feel the excitement of getting up here and shop with their funny money for any ole thing they wish at half price. If you have not shopped with us and collected Bonus Bucks you should look into it, it’s a blast. After September 1st, we can’t take in anymore of the bucks since we begin to give you 10 percent in Bonus Bucks back at every purchase so you’ll have as many as you can for next July and August when they spend up to half of your purchase during those two months. If you have any Bucks left over, you can throw them away so we can begin filling your envelope with new ones.
I am back at the seeding chamber this time of year. I am planting fall plant seeds along with herbs and perennials. I’m getting better at it, my timing is getting better, and I will hopefully have some hard-to-find stuff available. So far, I have sprouted cardoon, stock, delphiniums, hollyhocks, five kinds of poppies, green, red and white cauliflower, larkspur, love in a mist, celery, water cress and some cut flowers that I’ve never heard of.
Some of the seed catalogs should be ashamed of themselves for the beautiful and enticing photos that make me order this crazy stuff. I will have sweet peas and nasturtiums ready when it cools down a little for those, like me, who are fans. The seed germination trail has been one of my favorite things in this field to get into. It has opened my eyes to such a world of plants that I’ve not seen at many nurseries. I am still working on planting the seeds at the proper depth and getting them moved up to their next size pot in a timely manner. I’ll just keep practicing until I get it right.
Two weeks after we get back from our Garden and Gun weekend in Nashville, my entire family will descend upon New Orleans to celebrate my mother’s 88th birthday. We plan to eat, drink and be merry for two days to show my mom how much we love and respect the life she has lived and the successes she has ringmistressed over her lifetime of life in the Martinson family, We are all safe and sound despite it all.
I am hoping you have a great Labor Day planned and that September will bring some excitement into your life with the hope of a cool off coming soon.
