RE: [gardeners] childhood tree
Seyfried,Alice (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Mon, 20 Jul 1998 11:42:32 -0400
Thanks, Allen. How awful you must've felt seeing your old home
destroyed like that. It makes me angry to think about it and it wasn't
even my yard!!
I sometimes wonder what the lady who used to own our house thought when
she drove by and saw that I had killed all of her hybrid tea roses (30
of them). I just had no idea how to care for them the first year, so
they suffered a little bit, then I had my 2 children and they became
totally neglected. If they got pruned once during the summer, they were
lucky. If they got covered for the winter they were REALLY lucky. So
last year my husband and I ripped them all out. We got sick of feeling
guilty that we couldn't take care of them (most of them had died down to
the root stock anyway). There was one, however, I would've liked to
keep. It smelled magnificent and was very hardy because it was still
blooming when we took them all out. But we were in destruction mode and
out it came. Maybe someday I'll replace it. I do love the scent of
roses.
Alice
seyfried@oclc.org
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Allen and Judy Merten [SMTP:jbmerten@swbell.net]
> Sent: Thursday, July 16, 1998 10:23 AM
> To: gardeners@globalgarden.com
> Subject: [gardeners] childhood tree
>
> Hi Alice,
> I think that all of us were glad you felt like venting to your
> friends,US. Thanks for considering us to be close enough to you to let
> your feelings out.
> I know exactly how you feel about that Maple tree. I am sure you
> have seen some of the posting I have made about my Great-grandmother
> that raised me for my first 8 yrs. When she became unable to live
> alone,we found this out when she set her bathrobe on fire while
> wearing
> it,webrought her to live with us. About a yr before she died she sold
> her house in Galveston. Some months later we drove by just to see the
> old house my mother and later I had been raised in. We were grief
> stricken to see what had been done. The man who bought the house had
> poured green cement over the entire front and back yards. The two
> wonderful trees that I climbed everyday were gone. Grandmas' perinneal
> flower beds were gone. The walkway from the sidewalk to the porch had
> been lined with Hibiscus,gone. The greatest travesty of all to me as a
> 10 yr old boy was he had cut down every fruit tree in the backyard,
> figs, red,yellow and purple plums, grapevines, and bananna trees that
> had little purple banannas on them every year that did not have a
> freeze. My Grandmother would fry those little purple banannas for our
> breakfast in honey and butter for our breakfast or a snack.My
> Grandfather had brought back the bananna trees from Central America
> when
> he came home from the Army.
> I would have gladly murdered that man. My Mother cried so much she
> had to park the car. She made us promise not to tell Grandma what had
> happened to her yard. She was afraid that it would give Grandma a
> heart
> attack. I guess the semi tropical beauty of the place made him afraid
> he
> would haves to do to much yard work.
> It still makes me angry to think about it 38yrs later!!
> Allen
> Bastrop Co.,Tx