Developing Horizons Magazine (2).pdf Spring 2017 DHM A | Page 24

Mountain Moments
Aunt Hattie
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose
under the heaven: A time to be born and a time to die; a
time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
F our seasons in every year bring
major changes in our environment.
After the long, cold and drab win-
ter, seeing the yellow bells starting
to bud and bloom, and the daffo-
dils appearing and stretching their
pretty faces upward to meet the first
warm days of spring, causes a rush
of anticipation and joy to rise in
my heart. I begin to look around
for what I cannot yet see, but that
I know is there. Little bunches of
green grassy foliage are coming up
in flower beds, along rock walls,
in the local parks and on the sides
of the road. Always more seem to
appear in the new year
than in the last. Yet I
find myself looking for
Aunt Hattie’s daylilies.
Known by many
names, such as Mom,
Grandma, Aunt
Hattie, Miss Hat-
tie and Lady of the
Lillies, Hattie Car-
oline Howell Kimsey was born in
Franklin, North Carolina, in 1892
and in 1908 moved to and lived out
her life of 104 years in Hiawassee,
Georgia. Hattie saw many seasons
in her lifetime, 416 to be ex-
act. She was alive when the
Wright Brothers took their
first flight, when men landed on the
moon, and when women were first
allowed to vote. She lived through
twenty different presidents. She
celebrated the arrival of electricity
and indoor plumbing. She saw the
transition from horses and buggies
to automobiles. She was a school
teacher in a one room school house.
She was numbered with the many
people who lost their homes and
had to move when Chatuge Dam
was built and the Hiawassee River
flooded the bottom lands to form
Lake Chatuge. She lived through
the Great Depression. She saw fam-
ily and friends leave for World War
I, World War
II, the Kore-
an War and
the Vietnam
War, many of
whom never
returned.
Aunt
Hattie, how-
ever, is best
known locally for her daylilies. She
knew everything about daylilies and
could talk for hours about them.
She could tell customers that they
belong to the genus Hemerocallis, a
word derived from two Greek words
meaning
“beauty” and
“day.” Thus,
the name day-
lily was given
to this flow-
ering plant
whose flowers only last one day.
The beautiful flowers open in the
morning and die by nightfall. But
each stem has at least a dozen flower
buds; thus, the plant stays in bloom
for several weeks.
Over the years, Aunt Hattie
became a master at hybridizing
her daylilies, earning her the name
“Lady of the Lilies.” The process was
not simple. It required her picking
two pretty specimens that would
blend beautifully, then fertilizing
one at the perfect time of day by
taking pollen from one flower and
placing it in the other flower. She
then had to wait for the bloom to
fall off its stem and hope that a seed
pod had formed from the cross
fertilization. This took about 40-
60 days. If the seeds successfully
formed, she would put them in a
bag, usually an old bread bag, and
put it in the refrigerator for four
to six weeks and then plant them
in the soil in early fall. While she
waited, she would water and fertilize
the seeds, and hope the plant would
bloom in spring. But, it doesn’t
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
24 Spring