I stopped in to see an old friend the other day. She wasn’t home, and hasn’t been for some time, as she passed away several years ago. But the cottage where this charming Estonian lady used to come nearly every summer weekend, is still there – its door off the hinges, windows broken and obvious intrusion by animals of every description. Bushes, vines and saplings almost hide the cottage from view, and the white picket fence I remember her painting one afternoon is listing and in decay.

Her garden, where she used to grow vegetables, followed later the same season by sweeping vistas of red poppies, is now difficult to navigate, wild raspberries snatching the clothing where potatoes once grew, and the conifers and deciduous trees she tenderly nurtured, now huge and towering above the garden. A rose arbour still stands at the far end of the garden, an abandoned bird house attached where she nailed it more than 40 years ago. Some of her gardening tools can still be seen in the collapsing outbuildings. A broom rake leans against the outside wall of the garage where she probably left it on her last visit, likely intending to finish her job on her next trip down from Toronto.

I was reminded of this kind and generous lady a few years ago when I gave a presentation to a group in Belleville. The person who introduced me had lived in a rented house nearby and mentioned a woman who spent her daylight hours in her garden and often gave her gifts of flowers and preserves. I knew right away who she was referring to, as I was often the recipient of such gifts. Neither of us could remember her first name – we always called her Mrs. Vool, and every weekend she would be tending her flower beds, planting shrubs, or harvesting produce from her garden.

Mrs. Vool and her garden became the topic of one of the first articles I ever wrote for the Picton Gazette almost 50 years ago. I located the article in one of my scrapbooks and discovered that I didn’t know her first name back then either! But I will always remember Mrs. Vool as a person who had such a love for gardening and would arrive every weekend with her husband, Andrei.

I enjoy reminiscing about experiences such as this. As kids, we would smile when we’d hear our parents going back in time, while we, as kids, couldn’t wait to see what exciting new adventure the following day would bring to us. Now we find ourselves doing exactly what our parents did routinely. They, too, found the world spinning at a mind-boggling rate as they dealt with milk marketing boards, changes in machinery and farming practices and trying to keep in step with what was progress back then.

“Why can’t we just milk cows the way we always have and ship it in 80-pound cans? Why do we have to get a pipe line and milk cooler?” I remember my dad asking. No longer can we drink milk straight from the cow, because progress has managed to rid our bodies of all manner of immunity to those things that today would cause people to throw up. Milk must come in plastic bags.

So, it’s more than just fun to look back. It is a much-needed battery charge in our hectic world to drift back to a time when life was slower and simpler. Life back then was certainly difficult, and few of us really would want to return, but families always worked side by side, and neighours worked together when the going got tough. As we get older, I think we all just want things to slow down a bit, if only for a day, so we can draw breath. Progress is great, but I think we may have lost something along the way.

Our connection with nature, gardening and reminiscing tends to be very calming. It is our way of dealing with stress and deadline pressures. I think Mrs. Vool, in her own special way, instilled that in me when she would flag me down to present us with a bouquet of flowers from her garden.

Terry Sprague lives in Prince Edward County and is a retired professional naturalist. He facilitates a weekly Coffee Chat meeting every Friday morning at Picton’s Community Care for Seniors.

For more information on nature, check out the NatureStuff website at www.naturestuff.net. He can be reached at tsprague@xplornet.com .