"Neighbors Grow Closer Through Backyard Gardens in Roscoe"

Your Humble, Faithful Blogster has two feature articles in the Mon Valley section of today's Tribune-Review. Neither, however, is on the newspaper's website. I will blog them, until (unless) they show up on-line at the Trib. (I didn't notice any substantive changes to either from what I had submitted.) This is the second.

In two next-door neighbors’ back yards in Roscoe, a love of flowers spanning the generations blooms from earliest spring until the frosts of autumn.

Carol Kroskie and Mary Milbert have lived next to each other since 1978 – and have been neighbors for even longer, since Milbert had lived across the street for a decade before that. Their small, level lots on Garfield Avenue are cherished flower gardens mostly hidden from passersby, especially those going by in cars. Walkers and bicyclists paying attention, though, will notice the delicate wildflowers blooming before Milbert’s front porch and the roses by the fence, or the hydrangeas in front of Kroskie’s house and the irises and tiger lilies along the side, marching towards the street.

Milbert, who grew up in Roscoe, says she has been keeping flower gardens most of her life.

“I got into gardening when I was still living at home. We lived in a double house, and I took over my grandmother’s garden,” she recalls, “when she died in 1953.”

A few perennial flowers in Milbert’s garden survive from those days: “The small yellow primroses were originally from my grandmother’s garden,” she says, “and the hostas, and the snow drops.”

Kroskie grew up in Granville, and didn’t start gardening until the early 1980s when she and Milbert started a daily walking tour.

“We were really the first ones to start walking around here,” Kroskie remembers. “We walked together for about 12 years.”

“Carol and I were the walking club in those days,” Milbert says. “We walked 4 miles, shy two-tenths. Up around Elco, through Roscoe down to the mill fence in Stockdale, then back up through Stroall Acres and Roscoe into Elco again, and back home.”

Kroskie’s husband, Larry, remembers giving it a try. “It was a daily ritual with them. Every day. I tried it a couple of times, but I couldn’t keep up.”

Those walks took them near the riverside home of the late Helen Bourbous in Stockdale. She was a prolific gardener – and a generous one, too – and Milbert and Kroskie benefited from Bourbous’ largesse of plants, bulbs, rizomes, and seeds.

“We used to carry things home in bags,” Milbert remembers. “Sometimes it was hard to see because of the leaves.”

“And I used to wonder sometimes,” Kroskie chimes in, “what people would be thinking.”

Milbert used to look through her various catalogs and be amazed at Bourbous’ generosity.

“Some of her irises – the rizomes would cost eight or nine dollars a piece. And she once handed me a plastic lunch bag filled with columbine seeds – probably a couple of hundred dollars’ worth, I figured out later.”

Bourbous’ gardens are now all grass, a level lawn. But her flowers and other plants still grow in Milbert’s and Kroskie’s yards.

They have acquired plants from elsewhere, too. “I used to go knocking on people’s doors and asking if I could take cuttings from their rose bushes,” Milbert says. And tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, and poppies were recent acquisitions from the yard of an old house not long before it was torn down.

Milbert’s favorite flowers are roses, while Kroskie’s are hydrangeas and foxgloves.

“I make sure they go to seed, then I sprinkle them around,” Kroskie says. “And share with neighbors,” she adds with a smile.

A small magnolia tree rises amid the stone patio in the Kroskie’s back yard, where a bench and swing share space with the granddaughter’s toys. A white dogwood and two apple trees have their place on Milbert’s property: they provide an unusual refuge for nesting birds, for she has made them into “gourd trees.”

“I bought a gourd that at first I thought was only 99 cents. But it was actually 99¢ a pound, so it cost me twelve dollars. And I planted the seeds to get my money’s worth.”

Getting an idea from a TV show, she started to make birds’ houses out of the gourds, hanging them from branches on her trees. Of ten or so altogether, three or four of the gourds are usually occupied during the season. After having dried them out over winter, she scrubs them with steel wool to get rid of mold. Then she puts a hole in the side for the birds to go in and out, and a hole at the bottom for drainage.

“And little holes on the top,” she adds, “so the heat doesn’t build up. You don’t want to fry the eggs.”

Gardening can be hard work, and it’s often frustrating. Kroskie puts it this way: “The worst part of gardening is the diseases, mold, and bugs. And the weeding, too. But, I even enjoyed pulling the weeds when I could,” she admits, though a back injury and poorer health prevent her from doing as much now as she used to do.

A gift from Bourbous many years ago, more than flowers and shrubs, remains with her still.

“When I would go down to Helen’s, there was such a peacefulness, a serenity, in her garden,” she remembers, “and I can’t quite explain how I felt when I started gardening.” Collecting her thoughts, she continues: “People look for happiness everywhere. But I found mine gardening. Pulling weeds. Just digging in the dirt.”

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 05/22/05 09:11:17 PM
Categorized as E.L. Core @ The Tribune-Review.