“They’ve gone by long ago,” Mrs. Bardwell said, “but they’re real sweet in the spring.”
On the white and green trellis work above the kitchen portico, a crimson rambler climbed sturdily to the “ell” roof. A sweetbrier hung over the gate, with little white roses nearly gone. Then there were bushes of old-fashioned blush roses, so delicately pink and sweet that Polly declared all she could think of was her grandmother’s wedding chest at home, with its flat silk bags of dried rose leaves, still heavy with fragrance from roses that had bloomed half a century ago.
“Yes, they’re sweet, but I have a leaning towards the white brides,” said Mrs. Bardwell, moving from bush to bush like a white bride herself, with her silver white curls, pink cheeks, and fresh white apron. “And the bees love them best too. They’re all gone by, now. I can generally count on them along in June. The crimson rambler’s real hardy, but it’s beginning now to shake its petals. I suppose you folks down south have roses so much you hardly appreciate them, but we love them. Summer’s kind of late up here, and I’ve had roses for my table clear to the end of August. These here were American Beauties. I never tried them before this year, but a man come along last fall and sorter talked me into taking them, and they did bloom up real sightly, but terrible thorny. This bush I raised from a slip my mother gave me the day I was married. It’s a cabbage rose. ’Tain’t a pretty name, but I love the bush, and the flower too. It looks more like a lot of little rosebuds all clustered together than just one flower, don’t it? There’s moss roses down in that corner by the fence, but they went by last month too. These here, they call them Gloriana Wonders. I always feel like shaking them same as you would a child that won’t behave. They bloom all to once, and just open up their whole hearts in a day, and the wind blows them to Halifax.” She laughed happily, touching the leaves with tender, lingering fingers as you would the flushed cheek of a baby. “I suppose I’m foolish over them, but they’re all I’ve got to love and care for now. I used to have five babies of my own, and they’re all lying over yonder around their father, the Captain, in the little cemetery across from the lighthouse, on the east shore.”