Mrs. Fuentes wrote an excellent post on home culture, and it made me reflect on what I remember as a little girl, and how the home culture that my mother made affected me. I particularly thought about our backyards, and how much they were a part of our lives and homes.

My memories are filled with the foliage from the backyards, fields and woods I played in. Anything living and green in or near our homes has had a small, special nook in my heart, where I’ve kept fond memories of inspiration and delight collected over the years.

A vegetable or flower garden has also been a source of delight: there is so much beauty and wisdom to glean here.  And the eagerness to help Momma poke marigold seeds into starter trays, or pulling baby weeds from the freshly rained-on earth, had almost as much influence on my lifelong affections as the books I savored.

The sunlight on the trellis reminded me of something so simple: The trellis next to the garage, with its honeysuckle trickling upward, is a full leafy vine, and plain most of the year. But just after summer comes, all the little yellow and white ladies’ gloves shower down. At night when I walk the dog in the moonlight, a soft breeze will waft by with a sweet and gentle aroma from the tiny flowers. Our backyard really is that beautiful, and as much a part of our homes as the cozy rooms inside.

“There is nothing in all the influences and surroundings of the home of tender childhood so small that it does not leave its touch of beauty or of marring upon the life. . . . Wherever a child grows up it carries in its character the subtle impressions of the home in which it lives.” – J.R. Miller, in Home Making