Yellow Roses - Birthday Flowers

Roses are garden favourites of Margaret Edgar

20.05.12

It's taken "mainlander" Margaret Edgar some time to adjust to gardening in Taranaki, but the award- winning flower grower reckons she's got the knack of it now.

Replanting herself from South to North for family connections - well that's a mixed story, one fraught with a few rolling "arrrs" and pangs of sadness. But there are also the joys of being near loved ones, especially her grandchildren.

"My last home was in Wanaka and the roses were like bushes. They were just massive, because of the cold weather. But here it took me a long time to adjust - I think it was the salt air," she says.

"I couldn't get over how reserved North Island people were. They never spoke. I was really homesick."

The woman who grew up on a farm at Tapanui in west Otago moved to Taranaki in 2005 to be near family and her roots are clear the moment she speaks.

"Even my daughter said 'I didn't realise what an 'arrr' you had." Sitting under a garden umbrella on Monday afternoon, Margaret is apologetic about the colourful plot on Doone St, named the best flower garden in the latest New Plymouth District Council housing-for-the-elderly garden competition.

Source: Taranaki Daily News

The Memento Mori and Far Away Places: Yellow roses, time, and ...

by Deborah Newell Tornello

Â (An explanation, or else defense, through the use of words); an exercise in synesthesia (the overlapping of sensory experiences, such as color and memory, so they are perceived simultaneously and surreally) that was somehow made real for the two-dimensional screen; and a thick and thrice-looped tapestry shot through with pain and possession; heartbreak andÂ loss; and ultimately, love, and the absence of love.

I was utterly spellbound, from beginning (to beginning to beginning) to end.

As I reflected on the stories and characters–as I began to scribble down my reactions–certain motifs floated across the page.Â The theme of time’s elasticity–as expressed in the story of Michael Ginsberg’s birth in a concentration camp; as perceived and recorded in Judaism; as experienced during an LSD hallucination. The mysterious yellow roses scattered throughout the first two story loops–roses that were budding, blooming, and ultimately shattered. The fear of death–of one’s lover, of one’s career, of oneself. And finally, the intertwined warp threads of apology and forgiveness that held together this exquisite hour of theater.