SPRINGTIME ON THE FRIO DRAW

         Margaret Ruth Dougherty

SPRINGTIME ON THE FRIO DRAW

At the KD Ranch

Wylie R. Dougherty, guest writer

Spring began on the Frio when Crocuses, Tulips and other determined like minded flowers poked their heads through the late snow, generally after Easter.  Our Mother had a magnificent garden, both with vegetables and flowers.  As soon as the Farmer’s Almanac said so, Mama would get Daddy to plow the big garden with Doc and Glen, the big black and white work horses.  It was a great sight to see Daddy with the reins around his neck directing these big animals with clucks and whistles, dragging the old “Mold-board” breaking plow and getting the soil ready for the vegetables that would feed the Dougherty Clan for another year.

After Daddy did the plowing, we, the kids, had to bust up the clods that blocked the rows of seeds that would soon follow: beans, peas, onions, radishes, turnips, tomatoes, corn, spinach, potatoes, asparagus, along with stuff we never heard of, but learned to like, like kale, rutabaga, etc.  Watermelon, cantaloupe and musk melon hills were also planted. 

One year Mama asked Daddy to remove a big elm tree which threw a huge shadow over a patch of the garden, Daddy dispatched Noel and Wylie to do the deed.  After cutting the trunk and branches, we dug around the tree to try and cut the tap-root and drag the tree out.  Good plan, but execution wasn’t so good.  Noel brought our old International W-30 tractor, named Bouncing Betty, into the garden, hooked a chain around the stump and pulled—rather jerked,  (it’s best to keep a steady pull on chain because a jerk can snap the weakest link of the chain. ) This chain snapped and shrapnel flew, one link flew past Noel’s ear and ruined his new straw hat.  After that we found a cable and finished the job, a few more square feet of garden with no shadows to block out the sun.

On the east side of the house Mama had her pride and joy, her flower garden. She had Morning Glory vines, Irises, Tulips, Roses, Amaryllis, Baby’s Breath, Coxcomb, Dahlia, Delphinium, Lily, Sunflower, etc.  

Mama didn’t just garden flowers, each Sunday she would fill several vases with flowers which would grace the front of the Church.  That gave the family a great sense of pride of the pride she had in beautifying the Sunday service.

During the springtime, the prairie bloomed, with displays of sunflowers, statice, Jack-in-the-pulpit, even weeds like jimson weed and cocklebur had pretty flowers, and stuff that I can’t begin to name. Soon after Spring began, the Yucca (or Bear Grass, as our family knew it) and Tree cactus (cholla) would begin their contribution to the beauty of spring.  Mama’s philosophy regarding native flowers was simple, “If it’s outside the fence—it’s a wildflower, if it’s inside the fence--it’s a weed”. 

She developed a reputation of being the foremost flower gardener and flower arranger artist in Curry County.  Even to the point of being named the Horticulturist of the year, by the State of New Mexico.  

The prairie east of GranDougherty’s house would bloom with spring flowers every year and the cows in the East pasture would mow them a little at a time.  (If we had a wet spring, the gramma grass and buffalo grass in the flat prairies were spectacular, sometimes belly-deep on small cows.)

After a spring flood, when the Frio ran bank to bank, we had flowers galore with all the weeds that came from the last year’s seeds.  Our milk cows’ milk would taste “weedy” during this time, one of the few gripes of the Frio’s bounty.

Mama also loved trees, so we fenced in a little patch North of the draw, dug holes and planted trees, Russian Olives, apple, some nut trees which had to be watered by hand.  My job was to take a pickup, load a couple of open-top barrels with water and water these trees with hand- carried buckets of water.  There were only maybe 20-30 trees, but it was not rewarding work, but it made Mama happy, even though we never got to harvest a crop from any of the little orchard.

Nothing made Mama happier than bringing some of her flowers in to grace the family table and make the old house a happy place; we miss that influence in our lives.

Margaret Dougherty

For MIL'S Place 4/6/16

by Wylie Dougherty, CHS, class of '53