Posts Tagged ‘William W. Little’

Perhaps introductions are in order?

Thursday, July 13th, 2017

Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.

Isn’t that the loveliest thought?  Roland A. Browne, author of The Common Sense Guide to Flower Gardening said it.  I’ve added it to my ‘list’ of things I wish I’d thought of first.  It’s a long, long list!

Right now, roses are taking center stage in our garden (such as it is).  I think the first week of June is supposed to be best for rose viewing in the Northwest.  Or, at least, that’s when the Rose Festival occurs in Portland.  But our roses out on the coast seem to be at their height a bit later.  Like now!

Not that we purposely cultivate roses.  Whichever ones bravely appear each year were planted long ago, either by my grandmother or by my father.  They were the chief gardeners on this property – my grandmother, from the time she arrived in 1902 until blindness overtook her in the 1950s; my father, from the time he retired here in 1972 until his death in 1991.

I don’t actually associate roses with either of them, though.  I tend to think of violets and silver dollar plants and sweet peas when visualizing my grandmother and flowers.  For dad, certainly for the years he lived here, dahlias and rhododendrons claimed his attention.

I do remember that we had a ‘rose garden’ when I was a kid in Alameda.  It was actually a garden bed carved out of the lawn in the back yard and I remember the rose plants standing stiffly and prickly row on row.  And speaking of prickly, in another area of that garden, up against the house, we had a ‘cactus garden’ which I never did feel friendly about – especially not after my neighbor Robert Reading fell into it from our sunroom window!

Now, with our seemingly endless policy of benign neglect, it’s a wonder that anything at all flourishes in our garden.  We do tend to have a lot of people coming and going, though.  Perhaps our roses enjoy seeing them as Mr. Browne seemed to suggest. I must remember to introduce them purposely now and then.  It seems the polite (and prudent) thing to do.

Thanks a lot, Dad!

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
‘The Honorable Jean Marie de Montague’ Rhododendrons

     My father, William W. Little (1909-1991), spent his last twenty years here in Oysterville.  He did a great deal for our little community – so much so that he was affectionately called “The Mayor of Oysterville” by his friends and neighbors.  My mother, a third generation Oysterville Espy, often said he was more Espy than she was!  I think that was meant as a compliment, but I don’t know how dad felt about it!
     When he wasn’t doing good works for the village, dad was tending his garden.  It was his passion.  In later years he hired someone almost full-time to help him out.  By the time Nyel and I “inherited” this object of his years of devotion, the garden was a show-place but was definitely labor intensive.  The rhododendrons he had planted – 199 of them by my count! — had grown massive, obliterating any sight of the church to the west and threatening to shut off our view of the bay to the east.  He had chosen well, though; we have “rhodies” in bloom almost every month of the year.  But managing them is a full-time occupation!
      Right now the Jean Maries along the east fence are approaching the height of their glory.  They were dad’s favorites, partly I think because they were usually in full bloom for his birthday on the twelfth of May.  Last year, which would have been his 100th, they were the most beautiful I had ever seen them.  This year, like everything else, they are two weeks early. But whenever it is that they begin to burst forth, they bring fond thoughts of dad — in spite of this garden legacy thing!