Oh, we whined when we were sent out to weed, a never-ending task, and bickered among ourselves about who was slacking. Weeding eventually gave way to picking the day’s bounty. There’s nothing like eating a carrot just pulled from the soil, or splitting open the first peas and gobbling them on the spot. But shucking enough peas or stringing enough beans for our big family was hard work.  There were occasional benefits to having six children – and assigning the garden work to the child labor force was one of them.

Mom had a green thumb, and her bounty graced practically every meal put on the Johnson table. We ate fresh produce all summer and into the fall. She also ‘canned’ fruit and vegetables, a lost art. Her gorgeous produce lined the shelves of her basement pantry – hundreds of Mason jars that gleamed like jewels.  Ruby red beets, emerald beans and pickles, carrots, tomatoes.  Peaches, cherries, pears bought by the crate, patiently peeled, pitted, blanched and sealed into glass jars.

Mom’s garden was ringed with apple trees, so she canned and froze apples that provided an apple pie every Sunday until the next season rolled around. (Her flaky piecrust secret?  Pork lard. She would smile to know that lard and lardo are on every chic restaurant menu today.)

Mavis Johnson picking cherry tomatoes. Credit: Sara MacGregor

Once we settled down, the Johnson children eventually drifted back to their gardening roots. My brother in Minneapolis starts his seeds under grow lights when snow still covers the ground, lovingly tends his veg in terraced beds, and then gives away the harvest. Another brother is in pursuit of the hottest peppers on Earth, astonishing his sibs by chewing on pickled habaneros. Sis in Alaska gets “biggest veg” bragging rights, taking advantage of Alaska’s endless summer sun. San Diego sister has citrus trees of every color. And Oregon sister harvests “U-Pick” cherries and berries.

Dearest Mom: Thank you for giving us the lifelong gift of gardening.

Sandy Johnson is a journalist and a gardener, equally passionate about both. She lives in Alexandria, VA.  Visit her on her blog, Grassroots & Gardening.

Credit: Gage Skidmore

Missouri was a nonbinding “beauty contest,” meaning no delegates were at stake. Those will be chosen at GOP party caucuses in mid-March. But it doesn’t tarnish the bragging rights of going three for three against the Mitt Romney juggernaut, especially because Romney won Colorado and Minnesota by lopsided margins in 2008. The tables were turned Tuesday, with Santorum racking up impressive totals of 55 percent in Missouri, 45 percent in Minnesota and 40 percent in Colorado.

There were no exit polls, but a careful read of  pre-election surveys by Public Policy Polling suggests the inclinations of older voters in the three states:

Minnesota. Remember that Minnesota is home to two unsuccessful GOP candidates: Tim Pawlenty, who endorsed Romney, and Michele Bachmann, who this week called herself the “perfect candidate.” So much for them. While the pre-election polling showed Romney as the top choice of older-than-65 voters, Santorum fared better among 46- to 65-year-olds. The oldest Minnesota voters identified themselves as evangelical and conservative but not supporters of the Tea Party movement.

Missouri. Talk about a missed opportunity. Newt Gingrich was ahead in the pre-election polling but didn’t even qualify for the ballot. That cleared the field for Santorum. He trounced Romney among older-than-65 voters and had a healthy margin in the 46-65 bracket.

Colorado. Pre-election polling suggested a convincing Romney win. ‘Nuff said. Among the older-than-65 voters, eight in 10 said they were conservative and half called themselves evangelicals, but only a third identified themselves as Tea Party supporters.

In a primary season with more complexities than Medicare Part D, Tuesday’s results serve notice that the GOP presidential nominating contest will trudge into March.

Read all Election 2012 posts here.

The older the voter, the better Romney fared. Among 50- to 64-year-olds, he won 55 percent; among those 65 and older, he won 57 percent.

Mormons made up an outsize proportion of the caucus-goers, and 9 of 10 voted for Romney, a Mormon.

Still, there was a cautionary note for Romney. His share of the vote fell just shy of the 51 percent he won in 2008, giving voice to the Republicans who appear to be searching for an alternative. But the alternatives are looking a little raggedy: Newt Gingrich won only 23 percent of the vote in Nevada, Ron Paul 19 percent and Rick Santorum 11 percent.

The economy, not surprisingly, was the top issue. Nevada’s unemployment rate is the highest in the nation. Among workers 55 and older, the jobless rate is 12 percent. The state also has the highest percentage of homes in foreclosure or “underwater,” meaning more is owed the bank than the house is worth. Of those most worried about the economy, 6 in 10 voted for Romney.

Two upcoming primary states, Arizona and Michigan (both voting on Feb. 28), are enduring the same economic challenges as Nevada. The votes in those states could set up the finale of the GOP nominating contest.

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Seven in 10 Florida primary voters were 50-plus. In the 50-64 age group, Romney won 44 percent to Gingrich’s 34 percent. In the 65-plus group, Romney’s victory was even more pronounced, 51 percent to 34 percent.

Maybe Florida primary voters loved what Romney said about Medicare and Social Security, two lifelines in a state where 18 percent of the population is 65 or older.

“We will never go after Medicare and Social Security, we will protect those programs,” Romney said the other night, a statement clearly aimed at older voters who might not be so enamored of his support for Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to overhaul Medicare.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(See what GOP candidates told AARP about Social Security, Medicare and other issues of interest to older voters.)

Florida will be a November battleground, with its rich electoral pot and its diversity of voters. Watch the older vote: In 2008, Republican John McCain was the hands-down choice of 65-plus voters, but Barack Obama won the 50-64 age group.

Florida’s primary voters gave Romney a badly needed lift after his crushing defeat by Gingrich in South Carolina. Florida voters said Romney had a better shot at wresting the White House from President Obama. And half said that home foreclosures in their community are a major problem, and they put their faith in Romney.

But Gingrich vows to carry the primary fight forward, and he was buoyed by signs like this: Self-identified conservatives barely gave Romney the edge over Gingrich, and the strongest supporters of the tea party movement preferred Gingrich by a double-digit margin.

Next up: Nevada, on Feb. 4, a tea party hotbed.

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Florida is at the forefront of offering citizens multiple voting options.

• Nevada, which votes Feb. 4, had the worst foreclosure rate in the country in 2011, for the fifth straight year, with 6 percent of its houses in foreclosure.  Almost six in 10 homeowners are “underwater” on their mortgages.
• Arizona and Michigan vote Feb. 28. Arizona had the nation’s second highest foreclosure rate, at 4.1 percent, and Michigan was 2.2 percent. Underwater rates were 47 percent and 35 percent, respectively.
• Florida’s foreclosure rate was just over 2 percent. Underwater homeowners made up 44 percent of mortgages. Its primary is Jan. 31.
  

  A home in foreclosure. Credit:respres

A University of Maryland study estimated a quarter of people in mortgage default or foreclosure are over 50.

Distressed homeowners don’t make for happy campaign chatter.  But they provide a backdrop for political points the candidates want to make.

In Monday night’s debate, Mitt Romney said troubled homeowners should get more flexibility from their banks. But he said, “You’re not going to get housing recovered unless you get jobs created again.” Just a few months ago, Romney had taken a harsher line: “Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom.”

Newt Gingrich is being battered by the other candidates for being paid $1.6 million by Freddie Mac, the scandal-ridden government mortgage giant. Which led to a Romney-sponsored ad in Florida that intones, “While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in.”

Rick Santorum suggested a temporary fix, letting homeowners deduct losses from the sale of their underwater homes. “It’s important temporarily to give people the freedom to get out from under these homes they’re holding onto.”

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More than six in 10 voters in Saturday’s primary were age 50 and older, and their support of Gingrich helped propel the former House Speaker to a stunning victory in the Palmetto State.

Gingrich carried all 30-and-older age groups, including the oldest voters who had sided with Romney in earlier contests. Voters over 65 preferred Gingrich 47 percent to 36 percent for Romney. It was slightly closer among voters 50-64: Gingrich won 39 percent  to Romney’s 31 percent. Younger voters remained loyal to Ron Paul.

Two-thirds of South Carolina voters described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, and they chose Gingrich 2-to-1 over Romney. Margins among tea party supporters and evangelical Christians were similarly lopsided for the Georgian, who cited his southern roots at every turn. This was a blow to Santorum, whose candidacy may be on life support without those voters.

South Carolina voters said the ability to beat President Obama was the most important quality in their decision, as was true in Iowa and New Hampshire. But in this conservative state, voters said Gingrich was the best candidate to win the White House, not Romney, by 51 percent to 37 percent.

Newt Gingrich. Credit: Gage Skidmore

South Carolina is a historically conservative state, and thus a barometer of how a Republican candidate will fare in November. “South Carolina is a red base state,” says David Woodard, a political scientist at Clemson University. “The moniker is ‘we pick presidents’ because we’ve picked every [GOP] nominee since Ronald Reagan.”

But the Republican race has been amazingly volatile thus far and it remains to be seen whether South Carolina will hold its title in 2012.

Next stop: politically and demographically diverse Florida, on Jan. 31.

They are an idealistic lot. In reality, millions of dollars are flooding into primary states to buy negative TV ads, finance suspicious robo-calls and pay for misleading mail flyers.

In South Carolina, the campaigns of the presidential candidates have been outspent 2-to-1 by so-called Super PACs, political action committees that can accept unlimited contributions and spend the money as they see fit, often to trash candidates. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2010 opened the door to corporations, nonprofits, unions and wealthy individuals to spend as much money as they wish on politics, undermining years of post-Watergate reforms. The Super PACs were born of that ruling.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thus, a Las Vegas casino mogul, Sheldon Adelson, can pour $5 million into a Super PAC that supports Newt Gingrich, although Adelson would be restricted to a fraction of that, $5,000, if he gave directly to Gingrich’s campaign. On the Democratic side, Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg gave $2 million to a pro-Obama Super PAC. These are just two examples.

These mega contributions come at a price.

“There are deep pockets on both sides of the aisle,” says Ed Bender, who runs the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in State Politics. “Wealthy interests come in and, because they can, write the big checks” that influence who is elected.

Voters should seek out unbiased information, Bender says. Check out his followthemoney.org website to find how political contributions play at the state level, and use the Center for Responsive Politics’ opensecrets.org for federal politics. An informed voter is a smart voter.

See all Election 2012 posts.

On such controversial subjects, pinning down exactly where the candidates stand isn’t always easy. Newt Gingrich, for example, initially dismissed Rep. Paul Ryan’s dramatic reform proposals as “right-wing social engineering.” Months later Gingrich unveiled his own plan to revise what he called the “welfare empire.” In Monday night’s debate, Rick Santorum called Gingrich’s idea to privatize Social Security “fiscal insanity.” What’s a voter to think?

Newt Gingrich talks with voters. Credit: Gage Skidmore

Social Security and Medicare matter in a big way in states like South Carolina and Florida, which are graying fast. In South Carolina, 14 percent of the population is over 65. In Florida, it’s 18 percent. The average age of GOP primary voters in each state is 64 and 66, respectively.

Not surprisingly, Medicare and Social Security play a big role in the health and financial security of older residents of these states that vote next (South Carolina on Jan. 21 and Florida on Jan. 31).

Consider:

·    More than 40 percent of older South Carolinians would fall below the poverty line if they didn’t have Social Security.
·    In Florida, a third of older people depend on Social Security as their only source of income.
·    In both states, about 45 percent of primary voters say they rely on Medicare for their health care.

Voters care deeply about these programs even as they fret about the federal deficit. And among GOP primary voters, there is, at least for now, a line in the sand: 7 in 10 are opposed to cuts in Social Security and Medicare as a way to reduce the deficit.

See all Election 2012 posts.

To help nail down where the candidates stand on these pivotal issues, read “Meet the GOP Presidential Candidates.”

Suck in your breath: South Carolina has 9.9 percent unemployment, Florida 10 percent and Nevada 13 percent. Those three states combined have shed more than 1 million jobs since 2008. But even those numbers may understate the problem. “A lot of people have quit looking or are under-employed,” says David Woodard, a political scientist at Clemson University.

Woodard, an astute observer of the politics of the South for two decades, went to a rally for Rick Santorum recently and was struck that he ignored the federal deficit and the economy – the two top issues for South Carolina voters – and instead focused on issues like gay marriage and abortion.

On the other hand, there might be no gain in reminding people how awful the economy is. Or in making a statement that could sound so outrageous when plucked out of context, as Mitt Romney recently did: “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” Even with the proper context (see video), it only reinforced the picture of Romney as a millionaire whose “unemployment” is a choice while he runs for president.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Woodard expects a South Carolina primary turnout of mostly older voters, as it was in 2008. The difference between then and now is the mood: Voters are surly. “It’s really apparent that it’s a very despondent and angry electorate,” he says. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this–a combination of the economy and fear.”

Obama has his work cut out, too. No president since World War II has won re-election when the unemployment rate was 8 percent or higher.

The calendar: South Carolina primary is Jan. 21, Florida Jan. 31 and Nevada Feb. 4.