What a lovely story. Sounds so much like a secret garden! ----- Original Message ----- From: Rosalind Hursthouse <r.hursthouse@auckland.ac.nz> To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Mon, 01 Oct 2012 19:28:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [pbs] what is your oldest plant What a lovely question! Mine is freesias. My mother grew them thickly along the edge of a border when I was a child in Wellington, New Zealand in the 1950s; mostly - perhaps all? Burtonii. When we moved up to Auckland in 1963, she brought a fair number of corms with her to plant in her new garden, which had a few of the original alba growing wild. She is long gone, but my 98 year old father still lives in the same house; I moved in to live with him seven years ago and have been bringing my mother's garden back into glory ever since. And the greatest glory is the freesias of which there now must be thousands I suppose. When they are flowering (they are more or less finished by now), I hear people walking along the street, behind our fence, saying 'What IS that wonderful scent, where CAN it be coming from?' and when they get to our gate and look over it, they see where it is coming from, and tell me that they smelt it yards and yards back. Rosalind