Do you have a “Bucket List” – things you’d like to do and places you’d like to see before you’re gone?  I think most of us do have such a list, even if it isn’t written down.  A “Bucket List” doesn’t have to be full of grand trips or heroic gestures.  Simple stuff can be on your Bucket List too.  For instance, I want to have a coconut ice cream hot fudge sundae with extra cherries.  Given my constant battle with my weight, that will likely be my last dinner.

Another item on my list:  working at Hasting Plants; a seasonal flower and vegetable nursery on a fifth-generation family farm – way, way down in Point Township, Posey County, Indiana.  So…why do I want to work there?  The first reason is Point Township itself.

Point Township

Point Township is located at the confluence of the Ohio and Wabash Rivers; it’s the little pointy toe of Indiana…if you went any further south or west, you’d be in Kentucky or Illinois.  Most of the land is flat river bottom or rich farmland too low to build upon (unless you like living on stilts and being marooned nearly every spring).

Except during the growing season, the empty fields stretch for miles and miles; there is little to shield you from the winds off the rivers, just a few far-off tree lines.  It’s a bit magical…the sloughs and vernal pools dotting the landscape hide fish, frogs, salamanders and herons.  Hovey Lake is graced by bald cypress trees; bald eagles live close by and the rivers are your constant companions.  Change is slow; abandoned barns gradually fall in, occasionally a tree will succumb to old age and gravity, but most the landmarks from my youth are still present, reminding me that I am young by nature’s standards, at least.

Nature and her children, the Ohio and the Wabash, still command this place; the people who live here understand and accept this.  Boating or wading out of the floodwaters to get to town on occasion is simply part of life.  It’s worth the inconvenience to live where your great-great grandparents settled, to enjoy the solitude and the wide emptiness on your own land.

Hasting Plants

Hasting Plants is owned by Mike and Nancy Hastings; Mike manages the farm, which raises corn, wheat and soybeans on hundreds of acres.  Nancy operates the plant side with six greenhouses and a garden-oriented gift shop.  There is something magical about Hasting Plants, too.  The gift shop is crammed full of really unique and lovely items:  garden art, statues, bird houses, faery gardens, all guaranteed to make any gardener salivate and want one of everything.  The six greenhouses offer vegetable plants, annuals and perennials, some familiar and some uncommon – certainly not seen in the big box stores.  The plants are well cared for and reasonably priced.  Visiting Hasting Plants has become a Rite of Spring for gardeners; it’s not really Spring until you’ve been to Hasting’s.  Even casual gardeners make the journey down to the greenhouses – it’s a Destination.

There’s always a happy, even joyful aura to the place: the rich scent of moist soil and green plants inside the greenhouses; the promise of warm weather when the rest of the world is still brown and gray. Wonderful Husband and I go there at least once every growing season and buy way too much.  No worries, though, I always find some place to tuck in all the plants.

When I was still working full-time, every year I would tell Nancy, “When I retire, I’m gonna make you hire me!  I’m gonna stage a sit-in and refuse to leave until you let me work here!”

Nancy always chuckled, taking it for the compliment I meant it to be.  But…this last autumn, she called me and asked me if I was still interested in working there.  I said “YES!” almost before she asked the question!

So, one item checked off my “Bucket List”, but I’m hoping I get to work there many years to come.  I’ll tell you more about life at the greenhouses in future blogs…the growing season is just beginning; I’m learning a great deal and have already met some incredible people!

Until next time, Stay Green, Good Friends!