Ronnie McAteer and his "Tech"-orange azalea. — Emily Paine Carter, special to So Salem

Emily Paine Carter is columnist So Salem. You can contact her at 981-3430 or via e-mail.

Emily Paine Carter

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Come see this solid "Virginia Tech-orange" azalea, urged gardener Ronnie McAteer.

He'd been told folks are interested in such sights.

He apologized that a recent hard rain had knocked blooms off both it and a fine dogwood. (This frequent gardeners' lament reminds me of fishermen's "carping": "Dang. The fish were biting LAST week.")

Still, the azalea was a brilliant, hot-orange blaze.

Also in the front yard, a magnificent Japanese maple: "Red-as-a-beet and about 20-foot-tall," Ronnie figured. It seemed "Chicago maroon" in color; that and "burnt orange" are, of course, Tech's official colors. Why, that maple + azalea = perfect Hokie horticulture!

(Wishing to avoid receiving letters addressed "Dear Ignorant Writer," I confirmed the colors with certified VT "Employee-of-the-Week" Lynn Davis of its College of Natural Resources.)

Both plants -- and two smaller Japanese maples out back -- were planted by Ronnie's late father-in-law Marcus Rowlett.

Talk of family filled Ronnie's conversation. He misses Marcus, whose widow Lois lives near the McAteers. "When my wife [Monterey] and I got married 20 years ago, the maple was only this tall," he gestured. "Now look!"

"[Marcus] lived 1921-2002. I miss him every day....He grafted apples; grew cedar junipers; tried his thumb at everything. He was in the military, then retired from the VA [Medical Center, nearby]."

He noted thick-bloomed rhododendron...a grandchild's columbine, mottled purple-white...budding yellow-orange Asiatic lilies...and where he and a grandson would soon plant 33 tomato plants ("they grow 12- to 14-foot!").

And -- again speaking as a true gardener -- he said some projects need attention: a patchy six-foot line where he'd conquered a nasty yellow-jacket nest in the yard, and a "must-go" tulip poplar.

But he has to "take it easy," thanks to a pool-chlorine burn from his residential-maintenance career.

Many can relate to Ronnie's remembrance of the beloved kin who gave bright plants and promising trees. It's a heritage; this genealogy-in-gardening gives a bit of immortality on -- and literally in -- earth.

So that's not just any ol' "pie-cherry" tree; your grandfather's tree begat it. The outrageously lush peonies? They're the "one good thing" from a "rakish" ex-boyfriend, that rascal -- but I digress. (And apologize for the gardening pun.)

Like Ronnie McAteer, we recall. We inhale the perfume of Auntie's vintage roses....Here, we think of the friends who shared lilies and iris and rosemary....There, the ferns? We've schlepped them from home to home to home....

They live on.