Post by nunnery on Sept 20, 2016 6:14:46 GMT -6
Greetings to all, my name is John Nunnery and I had the great pleasure of getting to attend my first Green Country Seed Savers Meeting this last Sunday. I have been living in the Tahlequah area for the last 13 or 14 years and it has taken me this long to discover this group (perhaps this is first thing I should say about myself: I'm not very good with dates, remembering exact lengths of times, and regrettably names, so please forgive me in advance), but I'm glad I've gotten this opportunity to meet such a nice group of like-minded individuals. My first introduction to gardening, like many of you I suppose, was through my parents. At home we had a large vegetable garden, fruit trees, shrubs, and vines were everywhere and to be honest as a child it never occurred to me that we were gardeners, because most everyone we knew did the same. I thought everyone grew beans and flowers, but of course as I grew older and moved away from home I realized this wasn't the case. We had gardens at home, but they always seemed "new," but it was my grandparents gardens which really captured my imagination as a child, for they had old established peach trees, plums, pecans, grapes, hydrangeas, roses, etc. Our gardens at home, in retrospect, seemed to have been trying to copy or capture the "Eden" of my grandparents. Going to their place both as a child and as an adult seemed timeless and enchanting due to the fact that nothing ever changed in their home, everything had a place and it was always there. At Grandma and Grandpa's there was a sweet rhythm of the home which seemed to me to be dictated by meals, gardening, sewing, canning, and card games with Paul Harvey playing on the radio in the background with "The Rest of the Story." My grandmother kept about a 1/4 acre vegetable garden and it was full and it was hers. She was very protective of her black-eyed peas, corn, turnips, green-beans, cantaloupes, and such. Grandpa would break the ground or it would be delegated to my dad or me and my brother, but after that it was hers and she protected it from every harm. She and my Grandpa grew up during the depression and World War II and so she had an appreciation for food like only people who live through such hardships can. In her utility room and sheds were rows and rows of canned vegetables and fruits. I never remember eating a can of anything from the store at her house, all the fruits and vegetables came from her jars.
That was my early introduction to gardening, but as I grew-up and began to make a living for myself I didn't have a chance to do much gardening. From age 17 to around 23 I simply worked 40, 50, 60 hours every week at something to pay the bills, but after getting out of the Navy and having the great opportunity to attend college, thanks to the GI Bill and the State of Illinois, I began my own gardens and began pursuing a degree in Plant and Soil Science. In college when I was looking for a place to live my only requirement was that it had a place for a garden and so I found an old miners shack (and it was truly such, for there was a lot of coal mines in Southern Illinois) with about 1 acre and there I composted, planted, and learned for myself the joy of gardening for four years. After college I went to work as a propagator for a large nursery out east, I helped them build the entire nursery from the ground up and it was a great learning experience. Each year we propagated about 1.5 million plants from cuttings and later after leaving that job to come and work for another nursery here in Oklahoma I continued to propagate the same amount of cuttings, but also did an additional 100,000 tree grafts and 100,000 tree seedlings a year. Now I've left all that behind and I work for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture as a Plant Health Specialist / Nursery Plant Inspector searching for excessive disease and insects in the wholesale/retail world of plant sales and assisting people with getting their plant material into other states and countries.
I am the father of five rambunctious children and the husband of one hard-working homeschooling mother, Adriana; the love of my life. Through all of these years my love of gardening has never waned, I haven't had a garden for the last couple of years, because of time and other things, but I never stop thinking about the joy or the beauty of it and I'll probably always pursue it. I'm glad to have met this group and I wish all of you many happy years of gardening.
That was my early introduction to gardening, but as I grew-up and began to make a living for myself I didn't have a chance to do much gardening. From age 17 to around 23 I simply worked 40, 50, 60 hours every week at something to pay the bills, but after getting out of the Navy and having the great opportunity to attend college, thanks to the GI Bill and the State of Illinois, I began my own gardens and began pursuing a degree in Plant and Soil Science. In college when I was looking for a place to live my only requirement was that it had a place for a garden and so I found an old miners shack (and it was truly such, for there was a lot of coal mines in Southern Illinois) with about 1 acre and there I composted, planted, and learned for myself the joy of gardening for four years. After college I went to work as a propagator for a large nursery out east, I helped them build the entire nursery from the ground up and it was a great learning experience. Each year we propagated about 1.5 million plants from cuttings and later after leaving that job to come and work for another nursery here in Oklahoma I continued to propagate the same amount of cuttings, but also did an additional 100,000 tree grafts and 100,000 tree seedlings a year. Now I've left all that behind and I work for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture as a Plant Health Specialist / Nursery Plant Inspector searching for excessive disease and insects in the wholesale/retail world of plant sales and assisting people with getting their plant material into other states and countries.
I am the father of five rambunctious children and the husband of one hard-working homeschooling mother, Adriana; the love of my life. Through all of these years my love of gardening has never waned, I haven't had a garden for the last couple of years, because of time and other things, but I never stop thinking about the joy or the beauty of it and I'll probably always pursue it. I'm glad to have met this group and I wish all of you many happy years of gardening.
