Flowers will always remind me of my father, who was an avid gardener. There were almost always some kind of flowers blooming in our garden - azaleas, gardenias, chrysanthemums, petunias, and always roses. Both my parents loved roses, and throughout my childhood there were always some kind of roses planted in our yard.
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| Roses along the driveway of the family home, c1973 |
For their 30th wedding anniversary my sister and I gave our parents five standard roses, which my father planted in our back yard. Through several years of drought and strict watering restrictions, when our lawns died and so many other plants were lost, we carried buckets of water from our bathroom to those roses, keeping them alive.
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| One of our standard roses thriving in its new yard |
After my parents passed away, as I was clearing out the house before it was sold, kind friends helped me dig up those 5 standard roses. After almost 20 years in the one position in our yard, the roses were transferred into old drums and moved away. As I settled into my new house, they spent over a year in those drums. Two of them died shortly after being dug up, a third died later but I managed to get a cutting from it to survive. The other two have thrived, and now have pride of place in my own yard, where they will hopefully bloom for years to come.
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