If 92-year-old Myrtle Foster gives up gardening it won’t be by choice. She has been gardening since 1926 and doesn’t intend to give it up now.

“I’m like a little girl with a shovel and bucket playing in the dirt,” Foster said. “If anything happens to me in the garden I’ve told everyone, Don’t worry. That’s where I want to be. That’s where I want to die.”

Foster and her husband owned the first house built in their North Topeka neighborhood.

“I got awful tired of living in town. This wasn’t in the city then,” she said. “We never thought it would be. I thought we were just going to be in the country and have a good time.”

She did most of the planting on their six lots, but when he retired at the age of 75 they gardened together. He died four years ago, but Foster continued planting.

“We both liked the outdoors and we both liked to work together,” she said. “I did the bossing and he did the work.”

At one time the couple grew fruit--she once picked 100 pints of raspberries in a day. Their garden also had strawberries, cherries and apples.

“I didn’t try to do anything about those after he died,” she said.

They once had a large flower garden, but that was wiped out by a flood and she decided the flowers were too expensive to replace.

Foster doesn’t garden all six lots anymore. She gave some to her neighbors in return for their keeping the weeds down on the property.

“I really have neighbors--not just people who live next to me,” she said.

On the remaining lots Foster has planted a garden that includes potatoes, peas, beans, spinach, radishes, onions and corn.

Although “It hasn’t been such nice ground since the flood,” foster still manages to grow a respectable crop. Her garden provides the vegetables she eats.

“I put away enough stuff to get through the winter,” she said. “I love to eat what I grow. I like the fresher stuff. And I guess I’m just enough of a country person to like beet greens.

“I can make an evening meal on radishes, onions and bread and butter.”

Foster spends a couple of hours in the garden each morning weeding and generally caring for the garden. She avoids working in the garden during the hottest part of the summer days.

“I have a little stool I keep out there with me. I work a while, then I get out of breath and I have to rest. So I sit down and look around at things. Then I get up and work some more.”

She doesn’t push herself because of her health.

“I try to take care of myself because I don’t want to go to the hospital or a nursing home. I told everyone if they took me out of here it would be kicking and screaming.”

Foster has had some health problems, but overall she thinks gardening has helped to keep her in fairly good health.

“It does me good to get out in the garden. I think I would die if I didn’t get out. I never could sit around and I never cared about jaunting around. I can hardly stand the winter when I have to stay inside.”

Because she tends to get cold even in the summer Foster began wearing a sweater when she gardens. Her neighbors encouraged her to wear a particular red sweater so that if she were to fall down or otherwise become unable to help herself they could tell immediately: “They said if they saw a red lump in my yard they’d know to come pick me up.”

Foster got her garden out late--she didn’t plant her beets or tomatoes until last weekend.

“But I guess if you were to get it in before, you sure had to snatch a day before it would rain again.”