D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
June 2008
Voice of a Ranchwoman - Gardening
Page: 3And then she had a cerebral hemorrhage.
They took her into Dr. Watts. And she passed away of a cerebral hemorrhage.
When they came back after she died, Aunt Connie — and Granny's told me this, too — said, "There on the table was her glove. Still in the form of her hand." They said it kind of gave you a strange feeling to see that glove. Like she just barely took it off.
Then, in the next few days, the things she planted started coming up.
That's like the resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. He died and then he was resurrected, and because of his resurrection, we have a hope of life after death.
I wanted to say, too, that my Grandma Dee, her ancestors as I mentioned before came across the plains with the Mormon pioneers. As they were persecuted and driven out of the country back in the East, they started coming across the plains for a land where they could escape this persecution. Brigham Young saw in a vision where they were supposed to be. He didn't know where it was.
Anyway, many of the people at that time were coming across the Oregon Trail. They were looking for places to live, and so what the Mormons were doing wasn't anything real different except that they were coming to escape the persecution.
They had gone into Illinois, into a town called Commerce, which they later named Nauvoo, which means "City Beautiful." It was just a swamp. They built that city up, planted gardens and made it a beautiful city.
They had planned they would leave orderly from Nauvoo, but they weren't allowed that privilege. They had to leave in the middle of the winter and leave all their garden spots and their homes, and a lot of them were burned, because the persecutors came in and would set fire to their houses and their haystacks. They had to leave in the middle of the winter, and they crossed the Mississippi River. It worked out that it froze so bad that they were able to walk across. They did have wagons when they were getting ready to leave — and then later it went to hand carts. But they got their wagon trains together as best as they could and got across the river, and started their trek west.
But they had a plan. As they went along the trail, they would plant gardens that they knew they would never harvest. They'd plant them for the Saints who would be coming after them, so that the others could harvest what they had planted. I don't know if other people did this, but I know about the Mormon people doing this. There's one place along the Pioneer Trail called Garden Grove, and that's the reason it was named that, because they had planted the gardens for the next ones to harvest.
Then when they got to the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young didn't know exactly where he was coming, but he knew he would recognize it when he got there. When they came down, actually he was sick when they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, he was in a buggy. But he raised up and looked out at the Salt Lake Valley — they named it that later — and he said, "This is the place." And it was just a desert.
They started right then, in July, which was late in the season to plant, but they started right then into planting fields and gardens, hoping they would have a harvest. There's stories that after that, the crickets came in and almost destroyed all their crops. But there was a miracle, the seagulls came — they've got a monument to the seagull there — and ate those crickets. So people have been dealing with pestilence and all kinds of problems with their gardens forever.
It tells us in the Scriptures that we are not even better than the dust of the earth, because the dust of the earth heeds the Lord, and does His will, because when the wind comes the dust goes wherever the wind pushes it. And it says: Are we not even better than the dust of the earth? The dust obeys Him, why shouldn't we obey Him, and do what our heavenly Father wants us to do?
I love this arid land with all my heart, because anything that grows in New Mexico, you know is tough. It has to weather the drought, and its roots have to go deep so that it can do that.
My dad passed away this last year, and one of the last things he said to me is, "Linda, I've just got one question to ask you. How come you've lived in that godforsaken place all these years?" My answer to him was, "Well, Dad, you and Mom just taught me to go where my husband goes." But what I should have said is, "Dad, I've had a garden for 43 years. That should count for something. I guess this was the place for me. This is the place."
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