Aunt Elva's Garden
At the rear of the house was my favorite part of Aunt Elva's garden. I loved her potting shed. It was the same style and color as the big house. It was always kept locked when children were around because this is where poisons were stored. I don't think that I ever went inside the potting shed, but I would peer through the multi-paned windows at the stacks of clay pots and I would dream of turning it into a playhouse. Every time that I see a simple clay pot, I am reminded of this potting shed.
Aunt Elva's rose garden was near the potting shed. It was rectangular and enclosed by a white trellis fence. You would enter the rose garden though arches at each end of the garden and the roses were planted on both sides of a straight walk. We would usually visit Oregon in late August when the roses weren't producing a lot of blooms, so I remember the dahlias in my relative's gardens better than I do the roses. This may be why I have so many dahlias in my own garden and only a few rose bushes. The photograph above shows one of the arches leading to Aunt Elva's rose garden. Those dahlias stir up strong feelings of nostalgia.
Uncle Lem smoked cigarettes. We spent Christmas of 1963 in Oregon because Uncle Lem was dying of lung cancer. Uncle Lem died that spring and my brothers and I spent all that summer with Aunt Elva, while our mother helped Aunt Elva get ready to move to an apartment. Most of my memories of Aunt Elva's garden are of that summer. Uncle Lem had been sick for awhile, so the roses weren't as well tended as they had been, but I didn't really notice. I don't know how many times I must have taken that path between the two arches. I suppose that the slight air of neglect just made Aunt Elva's rose garden seem more romantic.
By the end of that summer Aunt Elva was ready to move to her new apartment and I never saw her garden again. I was ten years old that summer and I was still enough of a child to gallop across the front lawn playing cowboys and indians with my older and younger brother. I didn't really develop an interest in my gardens until I was 20. I spent the summer
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