It’s the end of summer, and childhood memories from summers past fill my thoughts. I grew up in Iowa where the corn stretches out in neat patchwork fields as far as you can see. Plants are always knee high or higher by the 4^th of July. Iowa is the land of black loamy soil where kids catch lightning bugs in jars on hot August nights and summers last an eon—every child’s delight!

My first summer job at age twelve was working for Cargill de-tasseling corn. The work day started at dawn before the sultry weather took its toll. My co-workers and I stood on a moving platform that inched its way through endless corn rows. Our job was to snap off corn tassels (every single one!) so hybrid plants prevailed. De-tasseling corn was an Iowa rite of passage much like strawberry picking in western Washington state where I’ve lived for many years. I remember when our son Chris arrived home after his first bout of berry-picking. His baseball cap and clothing bore the marks of an all-out berry pelting. I wondered if any berries made it into the bucket! It brought back memories of corn silk and little green worms the boys couldn’t resist throwing at us girls in the Iowa corn fields.

When I was a young child, my dad took me to a neighbor’s garden to pick the summer’s bounty. It seemed like we walked a very long way to cross the narrow plank-bridge into the garden. My mom recently informed me that “the long way” was only across the street, a short distance from where we lived. Ah, the perceptions of childhood! Dad introduced me to leafy green Swiss Chard bunches, succulent tomatoes, and zucchini. Mom sliced the zukes, dipped them in an egg wash and flour, then  fried them like pancakes. Delicious!

But at thirteen, my world almost collapsed when Dad announced we were moving from our small Iowa town to an even smaller hamlet in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

I proudly told my new classmates that I was from Iowa.

They looked at me like I was an alien. “Isn’t that the state famous for potatoes?”

“No, no, no! It’s Iowa—you know, where the corn, the tall corn grows.” I wanted to launch into singing a few lines of the state song…we’re from Iowa, Iowa–that’s where the tall corn grows. I suspected that wouldn’t help my cause.

We settled in Washington Crossing, right across the Delaware River from New Jersey, better known as the Garden State. Dad caught the gardening bug while we lived there. He subscribed to Organic Gardening and started composting. Kitchen duty soon included the extraction of proper leftovers from dinner for the compost pile. His efforts paid off with a harvest of juicy beefsteak tomatoes, prolific zucchini, towering sunflowers, and sweet corn. Even better than the Iowa varieties! Dad prided himself on the quality soil he had created with his compost and the help of earthworms. One of his dinnertime treatises inspired me to write a speech for my  high school public speaking class on the value of earthworms. A topic most sixteen-year-olds are dying to hear about!

Years passed and Midwest memories faded as I migrated to the Northwest with my husband Randy and our two sons. My first glimpse of Mt. Rainier took my breath away, and often still does. Iowa flatlander sees real mountains for the first time! Our boys, ten and seven years old, squealed, “Mommy, it’s an ice cream cone!”

“Yes, it does look like one,” I said with a soft whistle. When you grow up without seeing anything on the horizon except miles of corn fields, mountains are nothing less than majestic. I soon discovered I had traded the land of lightning bugs for banana slugs. And I used to think earthworms were slimy!

My parents had also made their way to the West from Pennsylvania to California, and finally to Washington’s Olympic peninsula. Dad’s gardening interests flourished into a Master Gardener’s title. He continued to plant small raised bed crops into his 80s. Neat rows of beans, tomatoes, zucchini and of course, corn– that’s hardly ever knee-high by the fourth of July in the Pacific Northwest. When I was lucky enough to be visiting  at harvest time, I always savored the sweet kernels that popped when you crunched them off the cob. And I couldn’t help but remember growing up where the tall corn grows and childhood memories last forever.

Happy end of summer!