A note from Bagette April


Hi Teresa,

We said goodbye to my grandmother, Susie, this past weekend. She was 100 years old when she died on Wednesday. What an amazing life she led! When she was a little girl, she moved with her family from Missouri to Arkansas in a covered wagon. She never drove a car and she thought the whole "man on the moon thing" was just something they made up in Hollywood. I guess when you see that much change in one lifetime there is a cut off point as to what you can believe!

This is a picture of her taken about 15 years ago with my niece and nephew.

I just remembered something that I hadn't thought about recently. I can remember my grandmother sitting at an old sewing machine and sewing when I was a child. It was one of those that you had to pump with your foot on a pedal to make the needle go up and down. Can you imagine? She made aprons and pot holders and also quilted by hand. And she had a huge garden that encompassed her entire yard - very old fashioned with rocks that she gathered for borders. She had a compost pile in the corner of the vegetable patch. She used to send me out to dump the coffee can full of peach peelings, coffee grounds, etc. when I was visiting. And she would wear a huge bonnet on her head when she worked outside - I'm pretty sure she sewed those herself too. She was green before green was cool. We used to fuss at her for saving all the wrapping paper every Christmas. And I can clearly remember getting more than one Christmas present in a cereal box wrapped in some previous year's paper. Go Grandma – I’ll miss you!

Bagette April

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A very nice tribute. It was a pleasure to read about her.

Lee

Anonymous said...

You know, I never thought about this before. My grandparents also raised a garden, re-used everything, and my granny made the most beautiful handmade quilts you've ever seen out of her old dresses. *in fact, I keep one of them on the couch now just for snuggling under* They managed to survive the post depression era and beyond on very little money and yet they never seemed to do without anything-I think it's just dawned on me WHY.