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"No, it was mainly my mother's group of friends who would get together in the afternoon, especially in hot weather, and they would sit around with a fan and do things like that, canning and shelling beans and things like that."

"Oh, we had a garden, and that's another thing I don't see happening now. People don't have gardens anymore and when I grew up it was always working in the garden. I didn't mind it that much, but it was always something to do, I mean, you didn't have a lot of free time just to lay around and not do anything. [Interviewer: Do you remember what y'all grew?] Oh tomatoes and I despise butter beans to this day. We grew them and corn and just regular garden vegetables."

"So we grow. Right now I have two types of kale, two types of lettuce. I just pulled up all of my broccoli because that's my son's favorite thing to eat--raw, not cooked--is broccoli. In the past, we have grown several varieties of peppers, tomatoes. Corn, not as successful, but it just--I don't think it will be in a raised bed. Peas. I've done all kinds of things."

"We picked blackberries in the summer, which was a lot of woods then. We have had a hundred cans of blackberries. Canned. And Daddy went to the peach orchard back then and he'd buy twenty bushels of peaches or more, and I've been there with him. And can them. Didn't have no freezers now. We didn't have freezers at home, didn't have electric at home until about a year before I left or more. There was no electric, no telephones."

"I'm not a very good gardener. I want to so bad. My sister and I try to plant flowers every year. Sometimes they do well, but I don't do well watering them. I actually have a poinsettia, though, that I've kept alive. Since like December or January cause we always do like, for Christmas our church you can like, buy a poinsetta and put it out like in memory or in honor of someone, and so I got one that I've kept alive the whole year. I'm so proud of that."

[Interviewer: Did you garden when you were coming up?] My grandmother had one [Interviewer: Did you like working in it?] Yes, we were tortured. That's why I don't like green beans and squash to this day. Yes and my maternal grandmother had a huge garden that she could not manage for herself so she "solicited" the help of her grandchildren... I love the grocery store. And it's really interesting because there--I remember having to go pick blackberries, and there were wild grapes we had to go out and collect. But the garden really stands out and it was terrible.

"Well we got squash and oacra and string beans and butter beans and tomatoes and egplant and I've rented out four rows to one of my friends in town. Over there, he's got string beans and peas over there. He -- his heart wasn't in it. His wife and his daughter wanted some string beans, but he's a city boy and he -- I've had fun with him about the gardening. He turned in his resignation last week."

"I guess I'm gardening now, I just started gardening. I have a vegetable garden, which is, below to medium successful, um, it's really not great, uh, I'm not a very good gardener. [What do you grow?] Um, I grew a single sunflower, which is now dying, um, but, that's okay, such is life. Um, I very successfully grew radishes, which I don't like that much. Right now I have, a very sad tomato plant. I have a green bean plant which is not producing green beans, and a watermelon, a lot of watermelon plants which are not producing watermelon, and I have the world's shortest stalks of corn. Remains to be seen what's gonna happen there, um, and then I did successfully grow kale and spinach."

"We had all one garden. We had fresh-fresh vegetables and momma canned vegetables and we would have them all winter long. And we would can green beans and lima beans and corn. And we'd have that during the-the winter months and it tasted 'bout as good as when you first picked it. And when momma finally got her own pressure counter it didn't take too long to-to can then but when we first started canning we just had to put the jars down on a big pot and cover them with water and boil them until the top wouldn't wiggle in the middle. And-and we'd- and that last us all winter, with the-the vegetables. And they'd taste just about like fresh vegetables -- I don't know whether many people can now or not."

"We canned. We made sauerkraut, and we froze--no we didn’t freeze peaches--we canned peaches, made apple sauce and, we ate all winter. We shelled butter beans and my fingernails now still get sore just thinking about how sore they used to get from during the summer time shelling butter beans and freezing butter beans, and string bean and, we just had huge gardens. And it wasn’t just my family, it was the family in the neighborhood but we were all relatives. And, and as I’ve gotten older, and I talk to some of my cousins now because our parents are gone, and found out that the same food we’re eating now it’s like...do you remember mother use to duh-duh-duh? Yeah my mother used to duh-duh-duh…"