Today: A guest post by Marybeth Shea. An avid gardener (born 1960), Marybeth’s two homes over the last 27 years were built in 1945 and 1946: first, a tiny, frame gable-front cape sold even before it was complete to a returning vet, and now a modest center hall colonial, also sold originally to a vet. In this story — the first of several we plan to queue up — she tells us all about hybrid tea roses — iconic flowers from mid-century America.
She writes:
1996, Somewhere in Suburban Maryland: During the home inspection before we settled on the old brick, center-hall colonial house on a street named for a tree, I stood before three raggedy roses: These sorry but earnest plants grew in the front bed under the right hand window. “Will have to call gran-paw and ask about helping these sad roses.” The roses were inter-planted between what I later determined were forsythia bushes. So squared-off by an electric pruning sheers these forsythia were that they did not bloom until two years later after I let them grow. The electric sheers were left in the garage, an oversight or parting gift? I do not know. I still sometimes mutter, Clue-style, “Professor M. In the front yard. With the electric sheers.” Heck yeah there is more →
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