It is fuzzy but still lovely---We cut our bridal wreath way back last year but it is coming back---I love it.

florence

It is difficult to get so much depth of field in a photo! Still, glad to see a photo of your garden. I wish you would post some more!

--Ron

Patricia,
Here's the problem and it's such a common problem that affects so many plants. It's what we call our favorite plants.
What we used to call Bridal Wreath in Virginia is blooming right now, here in TN, way before any modern roses even consider the possibility of putting out buds.
Are those white blooms singles with four or five petals?
Or are the tight sprays of very petite flowers with about six petals.

Did I ever tell you about the Buttercups of my childhood, the bright yellow weeds that make some pastures almost inedible hay share the name Buttercup in Texas with the pink weed/flower called evening primroses/Oenothera?

And I wonder how far south Winter Jasmine survives? It's here in east TN, but with fewer good winters than it had in Virginia and this year was blooming at the same time as Forsythia. And then there was the winter when WJ's winter bloom was so nipped by cold weather that by the time it regrew its buds, the forsythia had already bloomed and was followed two weeks later by the Jasmine.

Thank you, Ron. You are always so kind.

Ann, I have both bridal wreaths that you describe. I do not remember which one this is. One was given to me by a neighbor who has trucked hers through Tennessee, Georgia and back to Alabama from her grandmother's garden. My neighbor is 70, so that's a lot of hauling.

Some of my bridal wreath (spirea) are not blooming, don't even look like they have thought about it, but the azaleas have been blooming for weeks, almost finished, in fact. My yoshino cherries are winding down and the one kwanzan I have left (borers, you know in the hot south) started to bloom and then we got all that rain and cloudy stuff and it looks rather ugly right now.

I think my bridal wreath bloomed at such an irregular time, but it had to do with Easter. Normally, my bridal wreath are all awash with snow at Easter, all of them, even the late blooming ones, and my azaleas look like an Easter basket with all the color and the bridal wreath, but not this year --- I am having rose bloom early. What can I say? Last Easter, I had Celine Forestier and Reve d'Or blooming at Easter (which was much later) and they were zapped, but the azaleas and bridal wreath were very pretty for what turned out to be a cold Easter egg hunt for the grandkids.

I will look tomorrow and let you know which one of these bridal wreath is blooming. I cannot remember if this is the one with the five petals or the the singles, and it is hard to recall since I put them out many years ago. I also have flowering almond and that other white plant that looks similar to a bridal wreath (cannot recall its name now but it grows wild along the Interstate here). Flowering almond is beautiful also.

You mentioned daffs. I cannot keep jonquils, daffodils, hyacinths, etc., for squirrels, moles, voles or rabbits or whatever. I have planted thousands of daffodils from both my mother's collection, my SIL's, friends in the garden club and those I have bought and I have but a few remaining. I have just given up on them.

Ann, we had buttercups growing wild when I was growing up and evening primrose that would grow anywhere. They are a form of poppy? They would spread like kudzu, except low growing all along the highways and byways and into the garden.

I don't know if you noticed my posts a few weeks back, but my flowering quince and forsythia did not bloom until mid March. I usually have quince and forsythia blooming mid February. I can recall that as well from my childhood, coming home to find my mother had made bouquets on the DR table of that orange quince and some white quince, with yellow sprigs of forsythia and we knew spring was not far behind. What a great memory.

I wish I were as dedicated as my mother to all those things. Maybe because I had boys instead of girls, but she always had fresh flowers in season on the DR table. Though she played the piano quite well and frequently, I associate (for some reason) the quince, azaleas, and other spring flowers with her piano playing. Maybe she played better when things were in bloom.

I love to see a bush of Bridal Wreath covered in blooms. Nothing is prettier. My grandmother grew it but I haven't found room in my tiny garden. Thank you for the photo, it brought back wonderful memories of my grandmothers garden.

Carol

Oh, Carol. I wrote this several years ago in my gardeners' journal, one cool clear April day when bridal wreath was in bloom because it reminds me of her.

She was beautiful when she was young, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Her hair was raven colored, her cheek bones framed the most beautifully architectural face and her eyes were like chestnuts. In the picture I saw, her waist could not have been more than 18 inches cinched in a laced corset, no doubt, but she was young and though beautiful, the white blouse with its high collar and pearl buttons complimented the face already terse with tracking miles, but the long black taffeta-like skirt lent a beautifully softness to this remarkable woman. Her fingers were long, as if manicured to give them a bony look so they accentuated the single gold ring with a lone diamond that adorned her left ring finger. The only other jewelry she wore was the single strand of pearls and the pearl-buttoned blouse. The picture in black and white was growing tired and becoming gray and yellow but it showed the true character of this beautiful woman, a young bride who had just finished breast-feeding her first child.

Many miles, many Sundays and many hardships from that day, this woman who hand-fed her sick animals, made sure every homeless person who traveled the dirt road to her door was fed a decent meal, breast fed her babies, hand fed her animals, milked cows, plucked eggs, wrung the necks of the chickens she loved so that her family might eat, suffered the Great Depression, buried a child in the lonely cold January wind of a Texas snow. She was a midwife to many, a respite for all that came her way. She could bait a fishing hook and catch a meal, scale the fish and fry them up, and serve with style on an Army Navy tablecloth, a gift from a loving nephew who served in the European theatre. The blue and white China gave credence to a blue plate dinner. Little did those who came her way know that she saved the tallow for making her own soap.

She watched the skies for clouds that might blow in and destroy the crops, the homes. She watched for homeless animals who needed food, and she fed them, petted them, named them and gave them a place to live away from harm, in the safety of her home or the now-abandoned horse barn. She lovingly fed and milked her cows, whose names were those of beloved family members. She shoveled manure of the cows she fed to the plants she grew. Her gray washwater from the iron pots where she had boiled water and washed clothes, before starching and ironing, was applied to the flower beds. The hulls from legumes she grew, the corn she shocked, all went to the large rows of flower beds of azaleas, spirea, daylilies, camellias, roses and all those who had no name or were passed along to her by her mother. The oldest of 14 children, and one of two female children, she knew her way around the kitchen, around the farm, around the neighborhood. She was the first to bring a meal when someone died, the last to leave the grieving family late at night.

She was my grandmother, the one who gave my mother and me our love for gardening. Regardless of how we tried, we could never match her humanitarian efforts. It seemed to roll off her like the sweat off her brow when she was preparing meals, for her family, the hired help on the farm. Her afternoons were spent cleaning up the kitchen, picking fruit from the orchards, peeling, seeding, and planning the next days meal. Her evenings were spent reading the newspaper and the letters after the long day was done. Her fig preserves, her peach jelly, pepper jelly, apple and plum jelly lined the walls of an outdoor building with wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling shelving. Blueberries and blackberries adorned biscuits or scones that she made from scratch for breakfast. She learned to make tomato gravy, white gravy and hoecakes from the days in Texas when money was scarcer than love and optimism. But gardening was her passion and she was very good at growing beautiful things, making them green, making them bloom, making them large. Of all the items in her garden, she loved bridal wreath the most. As her body became more bent with arthritis and her ribs began to collapse onto her lungs, her asthma so severe that she could hardly breathe but she managed her way to the kitchen each morning to prepare breakfast for many for more years than I care to think of, long past her physical ability to do that what she loved doing.

She looked at catalogs and cut patterns from newspapers for the latest and most fashionable clothes so that her family members might dress with pride and glamour. She saved money to buy silk and lacy lingerie for her female family members, something very few ladies could afford and certainly not in abundance. She washed and ironed handkerchiefs with little lace corners that she kept fresh and piled high for church and funeral attendance.

The treks to the fields to gather brush to make brooms always occurred on Sunday afternoon when the kitchen was cleaned, long after the family members and minister had left. Cool afternoons in the fall were spent sitting outside, rifling through the brush to remove anything that might be caught on the wooden floors when she swept, anything that she scrubbed with a mop made of rags which she had saved from her sewing that were not "fit for quilts." Ah, Winter. Winter is when she made the quilts. She hand-basted her quilts and later sewed them together after the batting had been added for substance. If there was time of Saturdays after preparing everyoneÂs clothing for church the following day, she took time to teach us to embroider, crochet, knit and do tatting. There was never a shortage of pillow cases that she had made from bleached cotton fabric onto which we could embroider designs and sew our finished tatting. To this day, I still have a pillow case of crisp white cotton which I trimmed in the only tatting that I had the patience to complete, with a compelling blue bird I embroidered with red roses in its beak. I never completed the leaves so the rose is just that a rose with no foliage, not unlike my garden in the heat of summer.

With a row of shoes to polish for Sunday, grandmother always delegated me to do the high-top roman sandals that I liked to wear polished up bright white on Sunday with the dresses and pinafores she made.

She taught me about cottonseed meal, guano, how to "drop" potatoes, sow peas, stake running beans, how to tell if a watermelon or canteloupe was ripe by thumping it and how to look for snakes in the briers or watermelon patch. She told me as well how to pick colors for a dress to suit my coloring and hair, how to clean china without eradicating the platinum band, how to clean crystal without pitting it, how to separate the clothes for laundry by color and fabric, how to love people who we find difficult to like, how to accept my children as individuals and to know they may not always walk with the right foot first but I must love and nurture them as best I can for what they become is more me than I realize, how to dress babies so that everyday is Sunday until they are weaned from public appraisal, to not concern myself with cradle cap as it is part of the human development, how to listen to doctors but cull the pep talk from the facts as part of the human experience. She taught me to sit still in church, how to read the Bible with discernment, how to keep silent in the face of adversity but mentally to make a plan to overcome it. She never was able to instill in me the importance of keeping my cards close to the vest as she did but she taught me (along with my grandfather) that women did not have the advantage but could take advantage of the opportunities that arose and how to make the best of the days when there was no opportunity. She asked me not to whine about the shortcomings in life but to understand it is not a perfect world. She taught me that my happiness rests entirely on my shoulders and how I deal with what life has dealt me and that there is no perfect world.

She taught me to pray with faith and the expectation that if I asked the Lord's will be done, to be willing to accept that His will might not always be my own.

I saw her shed her first tears when we had to remove the bridal wreath she loved so much, but we had to remove it because she could not breathe when her lungs became so tired from the compression of her ribs. Tears ran down her face, perhaps not from the bridal wreath but the memories attached to it. Her mother gave her that "first slip" to root and she had carried it many miles and on many moves and journeys. Now, the bridal wreath was a sign that her journey was coming to an end.

ItÂs a beautiful day today, the sky is clear and if she were here, we might be out wringing chickens necks or we might be creating a beautiful doily for the hall table but she is not here and the nurseries are selling bridal wreath and I am going to pick up two and plant them at her grave site. She will not have to worry about the breathing thing any longer, she will not have to worry about it becoming a thing of the past. I am going to give it a place of prominence and she can now have her beautiful bridal wreath with her through eternity without the concern for her health. I hope she knows that I remember the tears that day and am doing what I can to wipe them away. I surely hope she will.

Patricia, you've brought tears to my eyes. I can say no more.

Ingrid

That is truly beautiful....thankyou so much for sharing....what a Lady!!!
Michelle

Pat, you could have written that about my grandmother. Oh, how you have touched my heart today and made me miss her all the more. You made me cry but you also made me smile remembering the lady who was my grandmother and who always gave to everyone else even when she had little herself, who never spoke a harsh word to or about anyone, who sang Amazing Grace as she worked long hours everyday, and who never was too busy to stop and explain anything to the granddaughter who followed every step she took. I was nearly grown before it occurred to me that we were considered "poor". Funny, it never felt that way.

Love you,
Carol