Travis Summers tends his
tomatoes. Summers enjoys telling about his
beloved cat, Fluffy, who, cared for by
neighbors, still resides on his Weakley County
farm. Children, he says, are a blessing he and
his wife, Velda, missed. |
Four melons lie ripe and ready in the hallway of
Travis Summers' apartment at Lakeside Retirement
Center in McKenzie. The fruits, nurtured from seeds
saved from a "real big mush melon" grown several years
ago on his Weakley County farm, represent some of the
final harvest from the Lakeside vegetable garden that
was started by resident and former teacher of
agriculture, Joe McClure, of McKenzie.
The garden gave its growers an opportunity to
contribute fresh vegetables to the dinner table but,
91-year-old McClure says, "One of the main reasons for
the garden was a lot of the residents came up in rural
areas and have enjoyed going out and watching things
grow."
Summers, 85, who owns a 101 acre farm near Dresden,
brings up another plus to the garden project: "It's
good exercise," he says, "I love gardening. I used to
enjoy getting home from work, getting the tiller out
and working out there in the garden. That relaxed me
and I could unwind out there."
Sudie Tucker, age 83, recalls
having fine gardens in Weakley County with
husband J.C. before moving to Lakeside. |
He laughs, recalling the stress reducing aspects of
the hobby: "I could fuss at my boss out there in the
garden."
McClure started the project two years ago as just such
a diversion, citing the need for fun beyond the fine
living conditions at the retirement complex.
"The main thing is to have something for people to do
and talk about; around here we can get isolated from
things. It helps to have a few things in common and
the garden has helped to do that."
While not everyone participated in the actual
cultivation, several had a hand in the harvesting and,
says McClure, "We had lots of superintendents: people
who had grown gardens in their time."
Novella Jones, originally from
Gleason, holds squash fresh from the garden. She
turns 85 on September 89. |
Residents agree the vegetable patch became a
conversation piece and gave them an opportunity to
venture outdoors to watch the garden grow and become
fruitful.
McClure expressed appreciation for Lakeside management
who rallied around the project, providing a shed where
gardeners could keep their tools and fertilizer.
Among the vegetables grown this year were yellow
squash, tomatoes, green beans, purple hull peas, Irish
potatoes, burpless cucumbers, onions, banana peppers,
bell peppers, and corn, although McClure laments, "We
didn't get an ear of corn."
Deer and other wildlife are often viewed with joy by
residents and guests from parlors overlooking
Lakeside's back yard, which joins Carroll Lake, or
along walkways that wend through the lawn near wooded
areas near the shore, but the critters nearly spelled
disaster for this year's garden project.
The culprits left behind telltale signs of their
identities. McClure says he saw the tracks of deer
that simply bite the corn from the stalk. More wily
were raccoons who like corn best at the stage that is
just a few days from being fully ripe and ready for
human harvest. They come in at night and climb the
stalks, riding them down to the ground where they can
shuck the ears and nibble the corn off the cob.
Busy gardeners roam the
rows of the Lakeside garden in search of vegetables
ripe for harvest. In the rear, left to right, are
Travis Summers, Margaret Mebane, Rachel Akin, and
Aaron Pinson. Laverne Drewry holds a basin of fresh
yellow squash in the foreground.
______________
"You'll find a cob lying on the ground with every
kernel off it," said McClure in exasperation at the
lost crop.
Summers' melons met a similar fate, though he was able
to thwart the damage at the expense of enjoying the
superior sized melons from his promising seeds. "I
took to pulling them green," he said.
"He had some awfully nice melons and the next thing
you know, the groundhogs and deer had ruined them,"
said McClure.
The big teeth marks in the tops of the melons were a
mystery before he caught the culprit red-handed. "I
saw that rascal come up out of the edge of the woods
there," McClure said of the groundhog that had
discovered the delicacy.
Retired teacher Rachel
Akin and Joe McClure examine ripe banana peppers while
Margaret Mebane (left, rear), Aaron Pinson, who was
chief of police in McKenzie for 15 years of his
20-year career with the department, look on. Mebane, a
retired schoolteacher who turns 87 in November,
recalls gardening was part of life on the farm as a
child. "It's a wonderful project," she said.
__________
McClure is a former Ag teacher, a 1936 graduate of
Bethel College who went on to obtain his master's
degree from the U.T. College of Agriculture in
Knoxville in 1938. He taught agriculture at Rives High
School in Obion County and for ten years in Oregon
before his expertise shifted to flight and space from
1944 until he and wife Ernestine, also a teacher,
returned to McKenzie in 1965. He then worked as a
counselor at the vocational-technical school in
McKenzie until his retirement in 1978.
