Planting Signs and Easter Sunday

I could see her walking up the holler, her white hair covered by a blue scarf and a dark shawl draped around her neck and shoulders. She walked with a slow stride, her head down as if looking for something on the muddy gravel road. It was mid March, 1955, and Ninna and I were at the cellar steps checking through her basket of seed potatoes. The potato pieces had little eyes on them; some of the eyes were sprouting, and all of the pieces were withered.  It was getting close to planting time, but it surely was very cold.

She ambled her way toward us, unwrapping the shawl as she walked, and handed it to me.

"Reckon you need to use this kerchief to cover up yore granny's seed taters," Aunt Bett said, "it's freezin' an' it ain't near time to plant taters."

I covered the seed taters with her shawl.

"Bett, I done told you," said Ninna. "I'm plantin' these taters on St. Patrick's Day, jes' like my grammaw did.  I ain't plantin' no taters with you on Easter Sunday."

"Then they'll freeze and turn black; you just watch 'em, 'cause you're sposed to plant 'em on the hundredth day and you won't have no taters come winter if you don't!"

She grabbed her shawl off those seed taters fast as lightning, wound it around her neck and without another word, she stomped back down the holler.

It was very unusual for Aunt Bett and Granny Ninna to have harsh words between them. Mountain women didn't use harsh words; most were very quiet, never wasting energy on anger or unnecessary words.  "Save words for when you got somethin' worth sayin' and never waste your words on anger," Ninna had told me.  But I knew in my heart that this argument, the very first one that I could remember between them, was huge.  I'd never ever seen Aunt Bett stomp down the holler.  It scared me a little.

"That ol' woman ain't got no respeck for nothin'," Ninna grumbled.  "It's her taters that won't grow if she plants 'em on Easter Sunday.  She ain't got a lick o' respeck fer Easter."  Ninna's anger was new to me.

I had been brought up in the church and I knew the significance of important days.  Aunt Bett was familiar with them, too, and I couldn't imagine why she would disrespect a holy day.  That scared me even more.

We lived by signs, nature's little signals that told us when to do important things; when to plant corn, when to plant beans, when to plant all those vegetables that we would need to sustain us through a long, cold winter.  There were no weathermen, and even if there had been, the only television reception came from Tennessee or West Virginia, neither of which was anywhere near us there in the mountains of southeast Kentucky.  The man who announced the weather on the little local radio station didn't know anymore than we did; he probably relied on his own grammaw for his knowledge.  In those infant days of technology, news rarely reached us until a week or two had gone by anyway.  We could not depend on outside sources to tell us when to plant seeds, so we relied on signs that had been verbally handed down to us from our ancestors.

Aunt Bett swore that we had to plant seed taters on the hundredth day of the year because that's when her grammaw told her to plant them.  The hundredth day of 1955 fell on Easter Sunday, and that's where the problem began.  Ninna was looking at other signs handed down from her own ancestors but Aunt Bett was stuck on Easter Sunday.  I didn't really want to plant taters on Easter Sunday either, since Mom was busy on her old Singer sewing machine making a new dress for me to wear to church.  I surely wanted to wear that new dress, but not while planting seed taters in the garden.

Signs were so important, and though I know they were just words handed down from generation to generation, I can hardly plant a seed today without remembering them.  Some of them make perfect sense, like planting by the full of the moon, when its gravitational pull brings moisture to the top of the soil.  Seeds planted then will germinate and grow full and lush very quickly.

*Don't plant till you see the V of the turkey buzzard's wings; when he comes gliding from side to side up the holler, you'll know it's time for spring.  Some people called that turkey buzzard Old John Crow, but I knew that couldn't be right because crows have black heads and the old turkey buzzard had a red head.  I always looked for the red head swaying in the breeze as he made his way up the holler.

*Plant corn when you hear the first song of the whippoorwill.

*Plant spinach when lilacs are in first leaf.

*Plant corn and beans when apple blossoms start to fall.

*Soon as the daffodils bloom, plant lettuce and cabbage.

*Plant tomatoes when the wild dogwood blooms.

*When you see yellow on the forsythia, plant peas.

There were signs for things besides planting as well:

*There's a bad rain a'comin' if the cows turn their backs to the wind.

*If a rooster crows at night, rain's in sight.

*Red sails in mornin', take warnin'.  Red sails at night, everything's all right.

*Ring around th' moon, bad weather right soon.

*Clear moon in October, first frost 'fore mornin'.

 And so it went; we lived by the signs.

St. Patrick's Day came and went and we didn't see a sign of Aunt Bett. I noticed Ninna didn't plant her seed taters either, but I didn't say anything.  Sometime around the first week in April, Ninna suggested we take a walk down the holler; it was a nice, sunny day.  I shuffled my feet as I walked, testing the dryness of the road, kicking a gravel or two toward the creek.

"You watchin' for the ol' turkey buzzard, Ninna; it's right near spring time, doncha reckon?"

"Yep, and if you look right yonder, you'll be able to see one comin' right at us."

I nearly lost my dignity right there but I didn't dare laugh out loud; in the distance I could see Aunt Bett coming toward us, her white hair glistening in the sunlight.  I held my breath as she got nearer, not knowing if the quarrel would continue or if they had chosen to forget it.  Aunt Bett spoke first.

"Howdy, Susan, how you been holdin' up?"

"Right good, Betty Ann, been doin' right good.  I been thinkin' bout plantin' some seed taters come Friday; 'course it's Good Friday, but seems like my great grammaw on my daddy's side said Good Friday was a good time for plantin' taters.  They always did have a good tater crop."

"I do believe Aunt Lizzie tol' me the same thing, so I was thinkin' 'bout plantin' my seed taters then, too.  We ought to have a good crop of 'em come fall.  I reckon Good Friday ought to be as good a day as any for plantin'."

And just like that it was over; I could breathe again.  That was the way of women friends those days in the mountains; it was strength and dignity that kept harsh words at a minimum and I learned well that most things can be resolved with just a little bit of compromise.

Years later I asked Ninna if she really believed in all those signs.  Her smiling blue eyes twinkled with her answer, "Nobody ever claimed them old signs was 'xactly right; only thing for sure, I reckon, is that most likely it will always rain after a right dry spell."  I reckon so, Ninna.

A real good crop came from those taters that were planted on Good Friday, a real fine crop.