"Between the Creeks" Page: 22

                                
rosemary for me and sold us pots of French tarragon and lavender. When Mr. Glover
learned that we were from Allen, he said, "I know where Allen is; a lot of history
happened around there." Needless to say, we talked history awhile. He knew all about
Sam and the boys, and about some of the lesser known characters that I am still
researching.
When we left Ladonia, the grey January day looked brighter. We had met two
very interesting people and we carried away a remembrance of the fragrance of herbs,
two pot plants and a cook book. Perhaps, I'll even get the courage to try Odena's recipe
for Lamb's Quarter Pie. We have a fine crop this year.
Roses grown in pioneer days rare today                            3-18-90
Spring fever has struck. I would rather walk around town looking for signs of
spring than search for obscure facts in a library. Petals of peach, plum, pear and apricot
swirl in the March breeze and fall like pink and white confetti on the sidewalks. The gold
and carmine of forsythia and japonica blaze from yards. Irises lean their heads through
the iron fence of the G.W. "Gabe" greenhouse where Joe King has offices. Dark violets
border the walk in Bessie Brook's front door. Mrs. Brooks and several others in the old
neighborhood around the post office reserve part of their yards for flower gardens. These
are not formal borders, but beds of perennial and annual flowers that overlap as the
seasons change. Between the flower beds, the earth is kept clear of grass. Once bare
earth front yards with beds of flowers were a familiar sight.
Some writers of Texas folklore have speculated and sought hidden superstitions in
the tradition of scraped earth cemeteries, however, in the past, the yards of homes were
also kept clean of grass. This was the only practical way to keep areas neat and free from
the danger of fire. Prairie grass wildfires burned cabins until settlers learned that the
grass had to be scraped away from their homes. Cemeteries had wooden markers that
burned if a graveyard burned off. I was also respectful to keep the cemetery neat.
"Grandpa fought grass all his life. I'm not going to let any grow on his grave." was an
often-heard remark at cemetery workings.
Grass was an adversary that was fought daily. Crops had to be kept clean of
grasses that were natural to these prairies. A spring shower would being out hurrah grass
like hair on a dog's back. It is ironic that the yards where you spend so much time,
energy and money to make lawns grow were once fields that farm families spent lifetimes
keeping clear of grass. They thought grass in yards was untidy.
After the prairies became fields, front yards were fenced and flowers were grown.
Until a few years ago, there were several old two-story homes in the Allen area that still
had white picket fences that surrounded the front yards in the early part of this century,
although most fences had long since decayed, iron fences like Joe King's were rare.
I painted several pictures of the old Ellis Bolin homeplace for members of the
Bolin family about the time that the house was town down. They wanted the old home
pictured as they remembered it, with the white-fenced front yard, a flower garden like
Grandma Bolen kept it, without a sprig of grass. I walked through the jungle of
overgrown shrubs that the yard had become since the family sold the farm to find old
beds of jonquils bordering the walk and altheas by the front window. I found climbing
roses that had rambled on the fence and a rose bush centered before the wrap-around
porch.

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