“Unique Will Aids Needy Single Men:
Eight Institutions Also Benefit From $100,000 Fund Provided in Will of F. W.
Weston” read a headline in the Hartford Courant of November 11, 1939. The “unique document admitted to probate by
Judge Russell Z. Johnston” was the will and testament of the late Frank W.
Weston of 138 Elm Street in Wethersfield, Connecticut, which created a trust
fund with the Hartford-Connecticut Trust Company and stipulated, among other
things:
- “beginning
50 years from the date of Mr. Weston’s death, the Village Street Mission and
the Open Hearth Mission, both of Hartford, and their successors are each to be
paid $100 a year, ‘such sums to be expended solely for the assistance of needy
male single persons residing in Greater Hartford’”
- a
bequest to the Town Wethersfield to “make and maintain ‘a hardy flower and rose
garden to be planted on a slope of good soil and to be known as the Frank W.
Weston Flower Garden” – such hereditament to be nullified “in the event the
name of the street known as Elm Street, where the decedent reside, is changed.”
In
August 1978, town Mayor Cynthia Matthews announced to the Courant that work on
“the Frank W. Weston Rose garden in front of the Silas Deane Junior High School
will begin to take shape in the spring.”
Roses would be included in an area begun the Wethersfield Garden Club,
whose members would be bringing water from home to nourish the plants until the
town installed an outdoor faucet.
Apparently
nothing came of this because six years later Bill Pitkin, Wethersfield’s Parks
& Rec Director, contacted me as then President of the Men’s Garden Club of
Wethersfield to ask if we would develop and maintain the garden. "We started with a few bushes but by
that time the money in the account had grown so we just kept adding to the rose
bushes, terracing the land, adding the brick walkway, benches, the stone walls,
and the arbor," recalled club member and Rose Garden Committee Chair Rocco
to the Hartford Courant on June 28, 2004. Rocco, who was also the head of the
town’s Taxpayer Association and (according to the article) “can't resist
turning the topic to the goings-on in town hall when given the chance” added
“[the town government] could all learn a lesson from these roses….’You take
care of them,’ he said, ‘and they'll take care of you.’”
Twelve
years after that interview Elm Street’s name is intact, the endowment is flush,
and the slightly older Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield continues caring for
the garden.
With
one small exception the flower bed is100% roses. As a result the ground rules for maintenance
are pretty straightforward – simple enough to be codified in this Haiku that we
chant as call-and-response work song while toiling among the thorns:
Weston
Garden rules –
Fred’s
Astilbes exempted.
Not
a rose. It goes!
Actually
we don’t really do that – but we could!
Even though it doesn’t rhyme – or have a decent cadence. We totally could!
In
any event, on a recent Tuesday I was laboring by myself at “The Frank” and
anxious to try out my new Blue Magid Glove TE194TXL Men’s Pro Rose Gloves,
which I hoped would end my three-decade string of bloodied arms and hands – and
yet still be supple enough to pull out the multitude of small weeds that sully
the soil beneath the fragrant flowers. A
couple of weeks previous I had bumped into club VP Howard working at the garden
and noticed that he was sporting leather gauntlets. So, because I was using too much hydrogen
peroxide and Neosporin after each workday at the rose garden, I inquired as to
the source of his sturdy-looking safety mitts.
The answer, as it so often seems to be today, was of course amazon.com –
from whom, after getting the particulars from Howard I procured a pair.
I
am happy to report that they do indeed do what I hoped they would. Delighted that now I could extricate
dandelions and other tall weeds that had insinuated themselves alongside the
root and within the thorny stalks of the roses, I worked myself into a
sweat-drenched-frenzy for the next hour or so removing previously unapproachable
aggressors.
Then,
satisfied with my work I snipped off a couple of flowers for Mars at home, put
my tools in my bucket, and was heading off to the car when I noticed that the
two tall climbing roses in the arbor area at the top of the garden area appeared
instead to be one rose, and one eight-foot tall, multi-stemmed bush. I could not identify the shrub, but I did
know (a) it was not an astilbe and (b) it was definitely not a rose. So, definitely it goes. When I looked more closely at the situation I
discerned several thorny stalks enwrapped within the thicker stemmed outsider –
an even more challenging rescue operation.
Fortunately
I had my new rough-and-ready garden gauntlets and my trusty Japanese pruning
saw in its hand-dandy sheath – with which I vanquished said intruder and
stuffed it into the upper halves of two plastic barrels already 50% full with
garden debris, and already too heavy for me to hoist up to the nearby (but
uphill) trash dumpster. Other empty
barrels remained however for others to use.
So the actual dumping could be deferred until multiple able-bodies were
available to do the heavy lifting.
My
gardening addiction satisfied for the moment and my body hot and tired – but
for the first time my arms not bloodied – I sought the comfort of home and a
relaxing warm shower.
On
behalf of those of us allowed the joy of working on your slope of good soil –
thanks Frank!
1 comment:
Hm. Bonus: the sign's set in the same font as the signage in The Village.
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