generations of flower lovers

My mother is notorious for unique gifts.  My sister too.  A few years ago my mother gave me a framed set of 2 old schoolwork assignments that belonged to my great aunt, my grandmother's oldest sister.  A simple dried pressed geranium attached with white tape, with some handwritten notes she had written about it.  And one about a bachelor's button as well.  No Wikipedia, just a botanical book for a resource.  No font to choose, just her elegant script.

I never met this aunt, the woman whose name we chose for our second born.  Annabel. 

My grandmother loved her sisters, there were many of them growing up on a farm in rural Pennsylvania.  I knew most of my great aunts, Molly, Sib, Frances, and of course, Aunt Ella.  My grandmother was the glue, one of the youngest, but good to all of her sisters, different though they were. 

The framed set now hangs in my hallway as a reminder of my grandmother and those aunts who are long gone.  A generation's love of and dependence on growing things, not only flowers for beauty and medicine, but of food for survival.