Veona, the Garden Fairy

     
Meet Veona.  When I was growing up, Veona and her husband, B, and three childlren (older than my siblings and me) lived on the farm adjoining my family's farm. B had a job off the farm, Veona ran the farm, and the children were the brightest in our school.  We all worked on our own farms, and for each other.

Veona always had the cheeriest smile, even on the hottest summer days when the sweat was dripping off her face, and the corn and tobacco were parching in the rainless fields.  In the winter, she always had knitting or stitching projects to keep her busy.  All year, I would see her working in her huge vegetable garden and her prolific flowers.  The flowers were everywhere!

Veona had white hair.  I don't remember that is was ever another color.  She always wore working clothes:  boots, a ball-cap and a long-sleeved shirt.  Of course, she was a member of the Extension Homemaker's Club in the community, and was one of the oldest members.  Every year, at the holiday bazaar, she always had for sale buckets of Confederate Rose cuttings she'd rooted, flowers she potted, dolls she'd made and some other needlework.

Hurricane Floyd, in 1999, destroyed her house.  Daddy and my brother bulldozed the soggy remains.  The next spring, the entire yard was filled with petunias, the seeds from her flowers had been spread when daddy leveled the lot in preparation for a new double-wide trailer to be moved in.  (She told me she didn't have time to build a new house.)  The new house looked like it was floating on a cloud of soft pink and lavender flowers.  I think that is one of the most magical things I've ever seen!  Veona saw the prettiness, but wasn't going to let those wild flowers stay.  Said she couldn't maintain such a mess.  And, then she laughed!

This 14", wooden armature doll turned into Veona.  I think Veona, if she were living, would be wearing brightly colored clothes, pink gloves and she would surely have a bag for flowers and seeds.  I rarely saw her when she didn't have a tool of some kind in her hand, or was on the tractor, so the pitchfork seemed appropriate.  Her stocking hat is made from t-shirt bits, the clothes from bits from my scrap bag, the pitchfork from a wooden skewer and a bit of wire.

Veona was an original tree-hugger, hippie farmer, born in a different century.  My brother and SIL bought the farm when she died several years ago, and live there now.  Perfect.  I can still visit Veona's flowers anytime.