Anna Livingston Quotes

“I took a cautious step inside, marveling at the sight before me. A vast conservatory awaited, or what 'once' was a conservatory. Sunlight beamed through the enormous glass roof. I realized that its position at the center of the house precluded its visibility from below. In awe, my heart beating wildly, I lingered in an arbor covered with bright pink bougainvillea, with a trunk so thick, it was larger than my waist. Most of it had died off, but a single healthy vine remained, and it burst with magenta blossoms. I could smell citrus warming in the sunlight, and I immediately noticed the source: an old potted lemon tree in the far corner. 'This must have been Lady Anna's.'
I walked along the leaf-strewn pathway to a table that had clearly once showcased dozens of orchids. Now it was an orchid graveyard. Only their brown, shriveled stems remained, but I could imagine how they'd looked in their prime. I smiled when I picked up a tag from one of the pots. 'Lady Fiona Bixby. She must have given them her own names.' Perhaps there hadn't been anything sinister going on in the orchard, after all. Lady Anna was clearly a creative spirit, and maybe that played out in her gardens and the names she gave to her flowers and trees.”
― Sarah Jio, The Last Camellia

“Janie ran to my side, where she tugged at the book eagerly as though she'd seen it before. "Flower book," she said, pointing to the cover.
"Where did you find Mummy's book?" Katherine asked, hovering near me.
Cautiously, I revealed the book as I sat on the sofa. "Would you like to look at it with me?" I said, avoiding the question.
Katherine nodded and the boys gathered round as I cracked the spine and thumbed through page after page of beautiful camellias, pressed and glued onto each page, with handwritten notes next to each. On the page that featured the 'Camellia reticulata,' a large, salmon-colored flower, she had written: 'Edward had this one brought in from China. It's fragile. I've given it the garden's best shade.' On the next page, near the 'Camellia sasanqua,' she wrote: 'A christmas gift from Edward and the children. This one will need extra love. It hardly survived the passage from Japan. I will spend the spring nursing it back to health.'
On each page, there were meticulous notes about the care and feeding of the camellias- when she planted them, how often they were watered, fertilized, and pruned. In the right-hand corner of some pages, I noticed an unusual series of numbers.
"What does that mean?" I asked the children.
Nicholas shrugged. "This one was Mummy's favorite," he said, flipping to the last page in the book. I marveled at the pink-tipped white blossoms as my heart began to beat faster. The Middlebury Pink.”
― Sarah Jio, The Last Camellia

“I had come to love the space, and I could see why Lady Anna had too. The orchids were positively glorious. She'd tagged each flower with its proper botanical name, but I favored the pet names she'd given each bloom. For instance, a stunning pink 'Cattleya' was named "Lady Catalina." And a yellow 'Oncidium,' which to me looked like a flock of ladies in fluffy party dresses, was called "Lady Aralia of the Bayou.”
― Sarah Jio, The Last Camellia