My Mother's Garden

My mother asked, before she passed away, to finished her book. But when she passed I decided to write a book of poems for her. My mother was an outdoors kind of person, hands on, hands in the dirt, cultivating woman. She spent many hours out her her yard where she would read, do her cryptograms, watch her grandchildren or care for her garden. She grew plenty of vegetables, fruits and a variety of flowers. Not only did she grow her wilderness into a garden she helped plant the seeds of her grandchildren and her children and helped them grow. I haven't, yet, finished her book but I wrote this book of poems for her, my feelings for her as are the feelings of her seven children, 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. My mother passed seven days after her birthday, April of 2000. In the months after, I finished all that I would include into this book of poems. I knew I wasn't finished until I got poems from my siblings, nephews and neices. The collection came together in late 2002. This is the finished result, My Mother's Garden.