A Rose by Any Other Name

This healthy vine growing on a make-do arbor at the rear gate to the fenced in part of my landscape came from my Aunt Edna, who was married to Mother's brother. Aunt Edna has a green thumb. Here in Leon County she had a rose growing in her front yard that she couldn't kill, in spite of repeated efforts to dig it out by the roots from the tire planter where it thrived in her front yard. I have several roses in my landscape that came from her garden, but I can tell you a name for only one, which she called either Two Sisters or Three Sisters. She could never remember which it was supposed to be. It's not Seven Sisters, an old climber well known in the South. That blooms only once, usually late spring/early summer. My sistuhs are repeat bloomers.

Aunt Edna can stick just about anything in dirt and smile as it prospers. She goes by the signs too. No dental work unless the signs are in the feet. Since Aunt Edna is not blood kin, I couldn't have gotten my gardening instincts from her. I did get a generous dose of love for digging in the dirt from Mother and Daddy, although neither of them took it to the lengths that I have over the last seven years. Aunt Edna got her start of the hearty vine pictured here from her mother in northwest Harris County. Miz Rustenbach would be 109 this year. She always commented concerning her birthday that she was as old as the year. "Mama always called it Blue Bells," Aunt Edna has told me several times, and as the claim goes, "it's old, old....She always had it growing in her (swept) yard." I've shown an image of this evergreen vine in bloom (blooms only in the spring) to a few people, including someone in the school of horticulture at Texas A&M, but no one has identified it yet. I'm fine with Blue Bell, though. If that name was good enough for Emily Rustenbach, it's good enough for me.