Is This a House Call?

A gardener came into the nursery on Sunday where I work at my temporary seasonal part-time job needing help with her roses. (She actually came in on Saturday and the staff asked her to come back Sunday 'cause the rose lady would be in then.) She pulled a rose bush out of a bag and asked what was wrong with it. Well, there was no soil on the roots and it clearly had been the same specimen produced the day before, so it was looking very dried out.  We spoke for a while, I asked what type roses she had, how long they had been planted, the care, etc.

Come to find out,  Billie, the gardener has planted about a dozed roses out at a cemetery where her husband is buried.  She goes out to the cemetery to water the roses once a week.  So I ask where the cemetery is and perhaps I can take a look and see if I can help.  We make plans to meet on my next day off.  I won't mention the cemetery is across the entire metroplex but I pick a time to best avoid some of the traffic.

I get there a little early and have the opportunity to take a few photos.  

 A little history.

 

 The older part of the cemetery.

Billie and her cousin Rita arrive and give me a tour of the property.  

The area where the Hendrex family is buried. Billie has leveled all the stones and had this iron fence built for the area.  Rita tells me that Billie had planted flowers around each of the headstones.  Billie then tells me how the neighbor's cattle broke through part of the fence and ate all the flowers.  The roses are the only things she has replanted.

If you look closely there are some really thin looking roses planted along the fence line.  The roses actually look pretty good considering the conditions they have had to live through.  Two years of drought and extreme temperatures.  They are alive and have no dead branches.  I tell Billie that she has to use the organic fertilizer and get some new mulch over the area to keep the roses moist and insulated from the extremes.

Billie says her sons will come and help her this spring with the clean-up, trimming the shrubs, etc.  I told her I would love to come back and I would bring my husband for more help.

Rita and Billie are cousins by marriage. I hope I get this right. Billie's husband's mother and Rita's grandmother were sisters.

It was a wonderful time meeting Billie and Rita, hearing their family stories, how the property has evolved, how folks have come and gone.