Four generations of gardeners pass the gift forward
- Charles Reams 1
- Sep 9
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 11
Few may realize that gardening is a generational gift that can be passed down.
Gardeners help mitigate the soaring food costs and rapid deterioration of food quality. Shoppers are shocked that grocery stores have the gall to put out overripe fruit and vegetables and jack up the prices like consumers are blind or have no options to shop elsewhere and garden their own produce, when possible.
For whatever reason, many decades ago, Odell Choice got started in gardening. He eventually bought the house in Nicholtown and passed that cultivated gift down to his son, Sylvester.
Sylvester was such an avid gardener that he worked the soil right up until he died in 2025. Relatives marveled that he got out of his wheelchair in his backyard and worked the soil, his very rich, black soil.
Frustrated at last that he could no longer work the garden the way he wanted to, he had a truck haul in red dirt and spread it all over the backyard.
Now that his daughter and her son are working the garden, Heather Sanders is enhancing the soil again with minerals and compost. By Spring, the soil will be ready for produce, she said.
The tall stalks in the garden now are mammoth sunflowers, tomatoes are nearly ripe, and in the seedbeds, there are baby greens, lettuce, watermelons, and sweet potatoes.
Sanders is already mapping out in her mind where each plant will grow best.
The garden will be ready by Spring to grow summer crops, including squash, zucchini, peppers of all kinds, watermelons, okra, cucumbers, which did really good this year, so I’ll plant them again with sweet potatoes and anything else I can, Sanders said with a note of finality.
