"And some evenin' when the moon's full and there's a dew fallin',"
continued Aunt Jane, "that's the time to see roses, and to smell
roses, too. And chrysanthemums, they're sundown flowers. You come into
my gyarden about the first o' next November, child, some evenin' when
the sun's goin' down, and you'll see the white ones lookin' like
stars, and the yeller ones shinin' like big gold lamps in the dusk;
and when the last light o' the sun strikes the red ones, they look
like cups o' wine, and some of 'em turn to colors that there ain't any
names for. Chrysanthemums jest match the red and yeller leaves on the
trees, and the colors you see in the sky after the first frosts when
the cold weather begins to set in. Yes, honey, there's a time and a
season for everything; flowers, too, jest as Solomon said."
An old garden is like an old life. Who plants from youth to age writes
a record of the years in leaf and blossom, and the spot becomes as
sacred as old wine, old books, and old friends. Here in the garden of
Aunt Jane's planting I found that flowers were also memories; that
reminiscences were folded in the petals of roses and lilies; that a
rose's perfume might be a voice from a vanished summer; and even the
snake gliding across our path might prove a messenger bearing a story
of other days. Aunt Jane made a pass at it with her hoe, and laughed
as the little creature disappeared on the other side of the fence.
"I never see a striped snake," she said, "that I don't think o' Sam
Amos and the time he saw snakes. It wasn't often we got a joke on Sam,
but his t'u'nament and his snake kept us laughin' for many a day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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