A Story of My Mom’s Garden Legacy

by John Kalec

In the heart of the South Side of Chicago in 1935, on a narrow street lined with brick homes and the hum of distant streetcars, lived a little girl named Evelyn. Her home at 5246 Hermitage was modest and often bustling with the sounds of her older brother Fritz, her younger brother Rich, and the ever-present work of her parents, who toiled daily at the nearby stockyards.

Evelyn’s mornings were simple—often heading off to Robert Fulton School without breakfast, her stomach empty but her spirit lightened by the two pennies her mother would press into her hand. Those coins bought her a small lunch of peanut butter bread and milk, but what truly nourished her spirit were the flowers that lived just a few houses down.

Each day after school, Evelyn would pause at her Ukrainian neighbors’ yard. The garden was an unexpected burst of color and fragrance among the gritty backdrop of urban Chicago. Over the wooden fence cascaded gardenias, cleomes that reached like sparklers toward the sky, and grand snowball bushes that hung heavy with fluffy blooms. Evelyn would stand on tiptoe and inhale deeply, letting the scents wrap around her like a storybook. On special days, when no one was watching, she’d reach through the fence and gently pluck a few petals—never a whole flower, just enough to fuel her imagination.

She’d hurry home, crush the petals gently in her small hands, and stir them into water in an old jelly jar. With careful solemnity, she would pretend she was bottling perfume, mixing colors and scents into potions only she could name. “One day,” she whispered to herself with the certainty only a ten-year-old can muster, “I’ll have a garden like this. Maybe even better.”

Time moved forward, as it always does. Evelyn grew up, left the city, and made her way to Braidwood, Illinois—a quieter place, filled with fields instead of fences, open skies instead of factory smoke. It was there she met John Kalec, a farmer’s son with strong hands, kind eyes, and a quiet love of the land. Together, they built a home on Division Street. It wasn’t fancy, but it was filled with love, laughter, and soon, flowers.

The garden Evelyn had once only dreamed of in Chicago took shape one summer at a time. She planted gardenias and cleomes first—her childhood companions. Then came the lilacs with their sweet spring perfume, begonias in a thousand hues, and grand snowball bushes that mirrored those of her Ukrainian neighbors. Tall oaks shaded the yard, and burning bushes flamed red each autumn. Evergreens lined the back of the property, eventually forming a natural outfield fence for the most cherished event of all: the annual whiffle ball game played by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren each summer.

Evelyn’s garden was more than a collection of plants. It was a living memory, a place where past and present coexisted in bloom. As her children and grandchildren grew, they absorbed her passion without even realizing it, as naturally as roots draw water from the soil.

Her grandson Daniel, now living in Knoxville, Tennessee, turned his yard into a blooming tribute to his grandmother. His garden was a riot of color—black irises that looked almost like velvet at dusk, radiant roses of every shade, and a shady corner filled with the very same hostas Evelyn had once planted in Braidwood. Some of those hostas, in fact, had been dug up by Daniel himself on a summer visit and tenderly transported back to Tennessee, their roots wrapped in damp paper towels. “Whenever I water them,” he once said, “I think of Grandma Evelyn out there in her sun hat, deadheading begonias and humming Polish lullabies.”

Meanwhile, in Alexandria, Virginia, David cultivated a single gardenia bush in a small patch by his townhouse. For years, it was the talk of the neighborhood—so fragrant in bloom that passersby would stop in their tracks, close their eyes, and breathe in deeply.

“Where did you get that?” one neighbor asked. “My grandmother,” David said, with a grin. “Well, not literally. But spiritually? It’s all her.”

And then there was Katherine, in Needham, Massachusetts, whose passion blossomed a bit later in life. When she and her husband bought their New England home, the yard was little more than scrubby grass. But within a few years, she had transformed it into a tapestry of native wildflowers and carefully curated beds—lupines, bee balm, coneflowers, and foxglove dancing together in the morning mist. Katherine added cleomes near the front porch, a quiet nod to the grandmother who  loves them so much.

The two brothers and sister, despite the miles between them, make a tradition of sharing their gardening stories. They exchange notes about compost tricks, debate the best mulch for tomatoes, and even compare their annual harvests—garlic from Daniel’s southern beds, juicy heirloom tomatoes from David’s city planter boxes, radishes from Katherine’s raised beds, and sweet corn that made them all think of corn eating contests in Maine and Knoxville.

“Grandma laughs when she sees us now,” Katherine once said during a video call, her hands dirt-streaked after a morning planting session.

“No,” Daniel replied, “She’d just hand us some lemonade and tell us to pinch the dead blooms.”

As the years moved on, the gardens evolved—some larger, some smaller, some moved across states or were reshaped entirely. But the essence of Evelyn remained in all of them: a little girl peeking through a fence, a young woman kneeling in Illinois soil, and a grandmother who had unknowingly planted the deepest roots not in the ground, but in the hearts of her family.

Even now, when the great-grandchildren run through those same evergreens in Braidwood, laughing as they chase plastic balls under the oak trees, the scent of lilacs and gardenias floats on the breeze. Evelyn often reminisces about her incredible life …..watching, smiling, and tending her eternal gardens. Because love, like flowers, finds a way to bloom again—season after season, generation after generation.