One of us remembers a garden in the fertile soil of the alley behind the back fence. Another of us remembers gardens were kept near the clothes-drying lines in the back yard, and also near the street inside the nextdoor neighbors' fence. The nextdoor neighbors, the Greens, let grandpa garden in their treeless yard, I'm assuming so he would have more daylight than under his pecan trees in the alley and back yard.
But it wasn't community gardening. It was just living. And one of my younger cousins was so fond of the childhood memory, that she has based her career on the memory.
Our grandparents were equal parts faithful and earthy, I think. My grandpa, from a distance across the den, could smell like the earth of the back yard, instead of like the petro plant where he worked. His car also smelled earthy.
My grandmother also had distinctive odors about her: usually the smell of garlic and a pleasant bacteria that seemed to be particular to her. You see, she didn't use antibacterial soaps, nor very much bleach, ever.
My grandmother was "green" long before green living became popular. She used simple Ivory soap for washing up, and dishwater and products like vinegar, soda, and Comet for cleaning. And her house smelled like nothing. Her linens and house were odorless, except for cooking. ... Grandmother didn't need cleaning chemicals and fabric softeners, and I never knew her or my grandpa to get sick, not even when she was taking care of a sick grandchild.
Believe it or not, being in the outdoors, close to the earth, and having a diet rich in garlic and fresh vegetables from rich soil and good sun, helped my grandparents, and others nearby, to thrive.
Not being exposed to a lot of cleaning chemicals that cause normal, healthy, disease-fighting bacteria to die, also was probably a help to my grandparents and other elders. The healthy bacteria that thrived in garden soils, not only likely killed unhealthy germs from animals, but probably also helped boost my grandparents' natural immunity.
In fact, some soil bacteria, in places throughout the earth, is so potent with good bacteria, that a few scientists believe they are getting closer to defeating some types of infections that are difficult to get rid of. That's probably why many of the Irish have believed the soils of their homelands are nearly sacred — because those soils had been curative in the ancient and even recent past.
But if the science of healthy soil is not enough proof of God's blessing on a heritage of rich earth, try to believe on the way Jesus opened the eyes of a man who was blind, apparently from an infection.
Jesus put mud — from a certain place, not an infested place — onto the man's eyes. (We don't know for how long.) And, of course, Jesus being God with us, the man was healed.
