Roses

Silver Moon rose

"Sienna-bright leaves and thorns like spurts of matchflame had pierced through the severely cut-back trunk. If it didn't bloom this year, it would next: 'That's how gardeners must learn to look at it,' her mother would say.

"Memory returned like spring, Laurel thought. Memory had the character of spring. In some cases, it was the old wood that did the blooming." From The Optimist's Daughter

Eudora Welty said that roses were her mother's favorite flower, and from the beginning of the garden in 1925 until the 1960s roses were grown in abundance in the sunniest part of the backyard. Here are climbers such as Silver Moon, Lady Banks, cl. Cecile Brunner, cl. American Beauty, Dr. W. Van Fleet. This was a time during which many new hybrids were introduced, and Chestina experimented with many varieties. Roses figure prominently in Eudora's prose, with references to both unknown "passalongs" ("Becky's climber" in The Optimist's Daughter), named varieties (American Beauty, Dainty Bess, Lady Hillingdon, Etoile de Holland, and Radiance), and old southern favorites like Seven Sisters, Marechal Niel, Cecile Brunner, and Maman Cochet.

 

"Rachel, who believed in cutting roses in the heat of the day — and nobody could prevent her now, since we forgot to cut them ourselves or slept through the mornings — came in Aunt Ethel's room bearing a vaseful. Aunt Ethel's roses were at their height. A look of satisfaction on Rachel's face was like something nobody could interrupt. To our sighs, for our swooning attitudes, she paraded the vase through the room and around the bed, where she set it on the little table there and marched back to her kitchen." From "Kin"

 

 

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