Remembering loved ones on All Souls Day

Today is All Souls Day, when the Church remembers and prays for our loved ones who have gone before us. In that spirit, we’re sharing a reflection from a Catholic Garden Network volunteer about her grandmother – whose cherry tomatoes and stories still speak across generations.

Remembering My Grandmother, the Gardener

by Holly Thompson

This All Souls Day I’m remembering the biggest gardener in my life: my grandmother, Connie Streitz. I want to share how her love of gardens and her love for her family intertwine.

We often think of gardens as our connection to the earth, places to reflect on the beauty of creation and sources of nourishment. Gardens are all of these. But I was reminded recently that love and connection can have deep roots in gardens. The things we grow, and the memories of growing, can be powerful bonds to our families and culture. For me, I learned to garden from my grandmom.

My grandmother kept a sign in her house: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” I believe it, because gardens and libraries bring people and communities together, just as they brought my grandmom and me together. She didn’t have grass in her front yard; there were only flowers – roses, hydrangeas, hibiscus, and plants she named for me a hundred times. Her garden filled her life with beauty and peace.

I grew up on her stories, about plants and about her Italian neighborhood in New Jersey: a great-grandfather growing tomatoes, a relative making wine in the laundry room, a grandmother who raised chickens. Her family’s love of gardening ran deep. Coming from an Italian Catholic family that has lived in New Jersey for five generations, we would occasionally visit the cemetery plot after mass. One time when my grandmother was there she found a tomato plant that had been transplanted by nature and she said that her grandfather could grow tomatoes better than she could even after he had passed.

As any good grandmother would, she passed the tradition on to me. Her fridge held photos of me holding cucumbers and buckets of produce. The crown jewel was always the cherry tomatoes. Every summer she’d call: “Guess what I have?” – and we knew. We’d pick them together; as I got taller, I’d reach the ones at the top of six-foot trellises. She taught me the importance of tomatoes to our Italian culture, told me about the Campbell Soup Company and the history of tomatoes in New Jersey, and walked me through the varieties best for sauce.

When I started a garden at Catholic University in D.C., I asked her for books on plants and gardening. On the groundbreaking day, she and my mom came to cheer me on.

After my grandmother died, I picked some of the last cherry tomatoes from her plants. They were the first thing my mom wanted to eat in days. I didn’t want to lose those plants, so I put the two big pots on a skateboard and rolled them to my house – a sight for the neighbors. I brought them indoors so the green fruit could ripen. I named the plants Franny and Lily, after her favorite flowers (frangipani and lilies). They reached almost to the ceiling, our “Christmas trees.”

“These are my heirloom tomatoes. They are my inheritance.”

I decided to save their seeds, the same cherry tomatoes my grandmother tended for 15+ years. Seed saving keeps a living part of her close. It reminds me of the parent plants we picked from and turned into gazpacho. I plan to plant them next summer and keep saving seeds, so I can grow and share my grandmother’s tomatoes.

These are my heirloom tomatoes. They are my inheritance. They are my connection to the earth, the fruits of my grandmother’s labor still living and breathing. They are how she will say “hello” to me for years to come, and how I can share the fruits of her love with others. Gardens will keep connecting me to my grandmother and to the lessons she taught me. I hope to pass that love on to future generations.

May her soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

We’d love to remember with you. Reply to this email or join the conversation in our private forum: The Spirituality of Gardening → “Remembering Loved Ones Who Gardened.”
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