The last rose of November

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." Ecclesiastes 3:1 (KJV)

Against the wooden fence in my back yard a rose that forgot to bloom all summer is now enthusiastically showing off on this, the 14th day of November. Its spunk in the face of cool nights and overcast days has to be admired. I could understand this last fling if the blooms had started earlier, but they only began in October. Maybe it is the botanical equivalent of those nonconformist people who simply march to a different drummer.

Or, maybe the rose is like the gardener, always intending to get itself together and flourish and bloom and accomplish something memorable, but always caught instead in the hurly-burly business of life. While other rosebushes proudly bloomed on time, this one concentrated on providing shade for birds; its roots anchored the soil of a slanting hillside, keeping erosion away—all worthwhile pursuits, but not substitutes for blossoms. Like the rose, maybe I, too, did worthwhile things, but then one day I, too, awoke and discovered it was the October of my life and time to get on with it.

Birthdays at first come with glacial slowness; then suddenly, in late middle age, they begin to tumble by one after another. By age 60 they verge on avalanche, sliding past faster and faster. Each one reminds the gardener to act on intended dreams and purpose. The seasons do not last forever either for the rose or the gardener.

The first 20 years of life are mostly about learning and growing. The 20 years following those are about establishing ourselves (career, family, mortgage—the days when store clerks called me “Miss”). The years between 20 and 40 are about taking care of important things (saving for college, making money for retirement, seeing the children launched—the days when promotion to “Ma’am” seems a desired confirmation of deserved status). But then, suddenly there is that November of life, the 60th birthday—to all waitresses and store clerks I am now a doddering “Sweetie” for whom even the buttons on the checkout’s debit machine must be pushed.

No time to waste. November in the garden, or in life, is not the time to give up. Keep believing in possibilities, I want to say to the rose each morning when I go out to check that it has made it through another night and to cheer when it has; just hang in there, baby, I think each day as more buds, still waiting to be unfurled, race against the inevitable frost. Some things really are that much sweeter from having been delayed so long.

Copyright 2008 by Edith Flowers Kilgo. All rights reserved. May not be used with prior permission and appropriate attribution.

Politics in the garden

All the votes have not yet been counted in the semi-annual garden election, but it appears that the Brown Party, headed by the brutal Jack (“Take-No-Prisoners”) Frost, is trouncing the Green Party. Day by day, more sections of the garden switch parties.

No election is without its scandals, of course. Some accuse Frost of dirty politics. Votes were coerced, they say. Rumor has it that his brutal intimidation is done at night while the gardener sleeps, oblivious to the carnage beneath her windows. Others add that Frost is barbaric, sparing none, returning again and again to seek the few holdouts.

Annuals were the first to be overwhelmed by the rolling tide of Brown. Still, throughout the garden, pockets of resistance are seen. Shasta daisy clumps, still in Green Party garb, huddle to conspire and plan for April’s rematch. Above them a sheltering butterfly bush is still undecided—part green, part brown.

All is not yet lost, however. There are still a few hanging chads to consider. In the lawn, onions bravely caucus to laugh in the face of Frost. Against the driveway edges, strips of Bermuda grass still defiantly wave the green stems of their Party. Next to the house, azaleas settle beside the warmth of the bricks: waiting, waiting, waiting. Beside the wooden fence a lone red floribunda rose is the last staunch holdout.

And then . . . suddenly the word goes out: He’s coming. He’s coming tomorrow night. And it will once again be a landslide. Flower heads bow to the inevitable. This election cycle is all over.

But, beneath the soil, hope hibernates. Just wait, whisper the crocus and daffodils and hyacinths beneath their overcoats of good earth. Just wait. Just wait.

It ain’t over til April when, once again, the fat lady gardens.

Text and photograph Copyright 2008 by Edith Flowers Kilgo. All rights reserved. May not be used with prior permission and attribution upon publication.

Gardens of stone

Homer Kilgo (left) a World War I veteran.



"In Flanders Fields the poppies blow between the crosses row on row . . . "

When I was a little girl in Ashburn, Georgia in the 1950s, it was the custom on Veteran’s Day for the American Legion to sell blood-red crepe paper poppies. People bought them to wear in lapels as a symbol of remembrance of the war dead.

No doubt the idea of the paper poppies came from what is probably the most quoted war-related poem of all time: Flanders Fields. In my growing-up years, no child escaped grade school without memorizing it. I had not thought of the poem in decades until this Veteran’s Day. When I reread it, it came as a shock to me to read its final lines in which the author urges the living to take up the same cause as those who have fallen. I had not remembered the poem as being so adamantly pro-war, but it sounds that way to me now.

Around the world “gardens of stone” tell one part of the story of war. Each gravestone represents, not just a death, but an end to possibilities: no begetting of offspring who might one day cure cancer or make other discoveries that would change the world for the better. Those who have fought for freedom for their homelands deserve to be remembered and honored, not just for their sacrifice of their lives, but also for the sacrifice civilization has made of all the might-have-beens in a life cut short.

Yet, all wars are not honorable; ego, lust for power or money, religious intolerance and ethnic prejudice have populated more gardens of stone than any disease might have. For every just and necessary war, there have no doubt been hundreds fought merely for power and gold.

I’m thinking of such horrific events as Alexander’s conquest of the known world or Hitler’s insane attempt at the same goal. There is no honor due to savage soldiers who, at the command of an egotistical madman, massacred because they could. Yet, even in those cases, it’s not always possible to condemn the individual soldier, the one who fought because he had no choice—the decent man caught in an indecent situation where to refuse to fight would be suicide and the death of his own family.

One of the oddest experiences I’ve ever had occurred at a friend’s house where we gathered with her German guests. We spoke no German and they spoke little English. However, we managed to communicate and, in the course of an evening made an astonishing discovery: of the three men present in the room—two Americans and one German—all three had a father at the site of the same World War II battle at the same time. Those three soldiers lived to tell the story and to escape the gardens of stone, thus making possible the gathering that took place that night some 50 years later.

Perhaps the real lesson from the gardens of stone and Flanders Fields is that while we rightly honor those who gave their lives for freedom, remembrance is not enough. It is the responsibility of the descendents of both the deceased and the survivors to teach subsequent generations to let old wounds heal and to forge the kinds of connections that will ultimately turn foes into friends.

Text and photograph copyright 2008 by Edith Flowers Kilgo. All rights reserved. May be used only with prior permission and attribution.

Autumn view from Brasstown Bald

Aren't hobbies supposed to be fun?

While some unenlightened souls categorize gardening as a hobby, I have to wonder about a “hobby” that mostly consists of digging holes to take out what grows freely to replace it with temperamental green divas who are willing to commit suicide by purposely drawing up their roots and folding their leaves against nourishment rather than grow where a gardener wishes them to be.


Where do gardeners get the strength--or stubbornness--to keep on fighting these battles that they can win only sporadically? Perhaps it is no different than the plight of the golfer. Putting a small white ball into a sunken cup is not “natural” either.


Like golfing--another hobby that is supposed to be fun--gardening can be an obsession, a torture, even a cause for sleepless nights and money ill spent. Because, for the hardcore fanatics, gardening is no hobby. It is a disease that offers pain, suffering, worry and agony, punctuated by occasionally glorious bursts of beauty, joy, pleasure and satisfaction.


Compliment any gardener on his or her roses or begonias and the compliment is tossed aside with observations as to weather, bugs, drought. And, as every gardener knows, “You should have seen it last week.”


The only way any plant achieves perfection is when observers are kept out. Just let me invite a friend to see anything that has fostered the deadly sin of pride in my little ol' gardening heart, and that plant will, just for the perverse fun of it, blacken and shrivel the night before the visit. At least golfing doesn't offer that kind of cruel joke (although I have been told that there are golf balls with a natural affinity for water hazards).

Mushrooms in the garden

What is that little green thing?

People who don’t know much have sometimes told me I have a green thumb (and what a dumb expression that is). Sometime friends even come to me for gardening advice, which I used to think they actually wanted.

Now, however, I understand they are actually soliciting some hocus-pocus variation of “eye of newt and toe of toad”. What they really hanker for is permission to claim the care of such and such plant, which they have already killed, is so exotic that they are absolved of all responsibility in their failure.

Others ask for identification of a mysterious plant which they describe with much inaccuracy and flailing of arms. When I can, I name the plant correctly for them (virtually impossible without seeing it). When I can’t, I bite my tongue to keep from inventing some likely story that might please them even more. I’m convinced most of the more colorful names (John Lauter’s walking stick, lovelies bleeding, red hot poker or grandpa’s long-handled drawers—no wait, I made that last one up) come from just such incidents; a green thumb gardener, no doubt embarrassed by lack of knowledge, just made something up on the spot.

The thing that pleases me is how most visitors will gladly take home cuttings of nasty invasive plants I am trying to purge from my own garden. I know, that sounds like an evil trick to play on one’s friends. Really? Do you have any I idea where I got these bad boys in the first place?