THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503260161
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: PAUL SOUTH
DATELINE: MANTEO LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
From my work area at home, I can see them.
A Kentucky Derby glass on my coffee table holds a small arrangement of daffodils, dressed all in yellow like gleeful children at an Easter egg hunt. Their blooms are open and upright, as if gazing toward heaven to give thanks for the arrival of spring.
I look at those flowers, and I think of the greatest gardener I have known or ever will know: my great-uncle, Bill Avant.
Until poor health forced him to give it up, flowers had been at the center of his working life. A former horticulturist for the city of Birmingham, Uncle Bill went on to operate a small greenhouse in the back of the home where he and his wife, my Aunt Addie, and my Cousin Mart lived, near Davis Creek in Fayette County, Ala.
The small cedar home was next door to the tin-roofed wooden cabin where my grandfather, and his brothers and sisters - Addie included - were born.
For the South Clan, this was The Home Place.
And it was at this place where Bill Avant was something of a tailor's assistant. For if you believe, as I do, that Solomon in his Sunday best never dressed as well as daffodils, or impatiens, or chrysanthemums, or carnations, you know exactly what I mean.
Uncle Bill didn't just have a green thumb. The magical ability to coax beauty from the mystical mixture of soil, water, seed and sunshine, went clear up to his elbows.
Patience, too, grows a garden. And he had it in spades.
But his patience carried well beyond the garden. He married my Aunt Addie rather late in life by conventional standards, and became a father for the first time at 45. It has been said that good things come to those who wait, and Uncle Bill found this when he married the pretty, high-spirited woman who moved as a young girl, on her own, from the country to go to a business college in the big city.
``He was living in a boarding house where I was,'' my aunt told me just a few months ago. ``All of the girls adored him.''
It was easy to see why, with piercing blue eyes and movie-star good looks, and an easy charm he carried throughout his life. As Aunt Addie once told me, ``He was something.''
During relatives' visits to get a dose of what my aunt called ``Davis Creek Culture,'' Uncle Bill would always be at the front door, with a smile and a warm embrace. No matter how big loved ones grew or how old his family became, the hug was always there. And there would be fried chicken and fresh vegetables from the garden, and stories and laughter in the kitchen, and grace and remembering on the porch. And from the greenhouse, there were flowers.
But in recent years, age had made it so that, as my aunt said, ``If it's not broke, it's sore.'' Still, the love between my great aunt and uncle, for each other, for their friends, and for their family, never faded.
On Sunday night, Uncle Bill died. He was 85.
And while the flowers that grew in his greenhouse are gone, he has left us with a field full of something more lasting. Blossoms of love, bouquets of kindness, and gentle gardens of grace that bloom in a quiet shady spot in our hearts.
And there he will always be. by CNB