December Roses

My mother-in-law taught me how to grow a garden and make healing teas

Red, orange, white, yellow, pink, fuchsia, peach. My mother-in-law loved flowers and roses were her favorite. Since she loved all colors, she planted whatever seedlings she found. My husband and I visited her for years so I watched those rose bushes from the beginning. I helped her water a little but she really didn’t like to be bothered with another person while she tended the flowers in her garden. I might carry a bucket from the well to her so she could refill her metal watering can. It wasn’t one of those things with a long spout to gently water plants that you would buy in a garden store. No, her watering can was an old aluminum can that once held green peas. The label had long since peeled off and the rim was a tiny bit rusty, but she didn’t care. Her technique was to dip her fingers in the can and then sprinkle the roses. Some got two sprinklings, others three or four. White roses were special so they received five sprinklings. A final act was to talk to the roses. Maybe it was a blessing. Maybe it was to say thank you for being beautiful. I didn’t understand much Spanish then.

After the watering, Santos picked any dead roses from the bushes. She made little piles of withered petals and sticks on the ground in front of each rose bush and would come back later to gather them up. Her other flowers were tended only after the roses. Bright pink geraniums, purple-blue chrysanthemums, and orange birds of paradise received her water sprinkling. Since they weren’t as delicate as roses, she dropped water on them from that rusty can. Even that water was carefully measured.

The plants! I called them plants, but really they were herbs and green leaves with medicinal properties. She grew mint to help settle a stomach ache. It works. I know because once I had the worst stomach pain of my life. I must have eaten something too greasy or I forgot to boil the water for my tea long enough to kill the bacteria. That was before water delivery service was introduced. My husband was ready to take me to the hospital, but Santos told him that she would brew a tea for me. The back yard was where she had her little pots with plants that each had different healing powers. The pots weren’t smooth red clay ones from the garden center. No, she used cans that once held hominy, or lard or even motor oil. Why waste tin cans? Beautiful things could grow in something most people would throw away. I suppose that was her own recycling system. A very important herb was grown in an empty plastic ice cream bucket left over from one of her grandkid’s birthday party. I never learned what it was. Paint cans did not go to waste either. No need to peel the labels off. I read the descriptions and that helped me learn Spanish. Azul cielo or was it cielo azul? Sky blue. Amarillo de maize. Corn yellow. Verde de mar. Ocean green. No white walls for Santos!

I believe that tea was made from mint and oregano and rosemary. I wasn’t allowed to be in the kitchen while she boiled her concoctions. She wasn’t mean. I thought it was funny how she waved her hands to shoo me away. I knew to wait in the bedroom until she brought me a cup of that steaming tea. Aren’t bedrooms where sick people must lie down until their pains went away? Drink it all she ordered me. Bebelo ahora! Then she waited to make sure I emptied my cup. The second cup was what made me throw up and get dizzy. Santos smiled after I got back in bed. Her remedy worked. The tea was supposed to kill the germs by forcing the person to throw up. At least she didn’t rub that stinky brown ointment on my chest like she did when I had pneumonia and I couldn’t stop coughing. My niece told me later it was bear fat! Apparently they sell everything at el mercado.

We live in the house where she used to live. The first year we moved here, the man my husband hired to help in the yard cut all my mother-in-law’s rose bushes down to about three inches from the ground. When I went out to check on his work, I had a fit. The yard looked like a tornado passed through and left complete destruction. I’m from Indiana so I have experience with tornados. The man had pulled up all the mint vines and lopped off the geraniums and birds of paradise. I was crying while I tried to explain what was wrong. Feo, feo, feo! I was trying to say how ugly everything turned out. No, no, no is the same in Spanish. He glared at me. I guess I looked like a crazy woman. My husband Tony came home and translated. The gardener finished, hauled away all the sticks, branches and thorns.

Maria de los Santos Salinas was the best doctor and gardener in the world.

I am working on a collection of memoir stories about my husband’s family and my experiences in Mexico. I hope to publish them in a book. Since retiring here, I have even more inspiration.