Synopses & Reviews
Twice a year America's rose lovers cut the prettiest blossoms off their best plants and travel to the national rose show, where they lovingly groom their precious blooms for hours in a frigid hall in order to contend for the highest honor: the Queen of Show. Doctors. Teachers. Sheet metal mechanics. Lawyers. Truck drivers. Men and women. These are type A gardeners, and for them this is a blood sport. They grow tender roses in the frigid North and disease prone roses in the humid South simply for the challenge. They decorate otherwise lovely yards with paper bags and panty hose to isolate their choice specimens. They traipse through overgrown fields in the worst weather to save antique roses from extinction.
Aurelia Scott trails these self-professed Roseaholics as they plan, prepare, and compete, battling high winds, Japanese beetles, and the finicky demands of their precious charges. With all the appeal of Word Freak, Otherwise Normal People celebrates the singular satisfaction of cultivating beauty—and, of course, the thrill of victory.
Review
"Scott leads readers through the slow, diabolical transition that takes 'otherwise normal people' from hobbyist to serious grower, putting rose-mania in perspective for the rosarian and the amateur. She has a light, humorous style. . . .You will never look at a rose the same way again."
—Washington Post The Washington Post
Review
"The rose gardener's answer to our recent intrigue with dog-show people, spelling-bee aficionados, bird-watchers and any other over-the-top hobbyist who, when viewed closely, demonstrates how human nature can hang its hat on one topic ferociously so."--Rocky Mountain News Rocky Mountain News
Review
"Aurelia C. Scott has nurtured a wonderful bloom: a rose book for rosarians and people who can't tell a bourbon from a tea. Reading this delightful, fun story of obsession made me look anew at our backyard and ask, Where's my gardening shovel."—Mark Obmascik, author of The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession
Review
"What lengths we go to in our lives for plants! Not just rose nuts, but gardeners everywhere will love this book. I found myself laughing out loud and nodding with sage understanding--sometimes at the same time."—Bailey White, NPR commentator and author of Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Sleeping at the Starlite Motel.
Review
"With a breezy, infectious enthusiasm Scott offers a vividly engaging account of big-time rose competition and the seemingly average people who take leave of their senses in this addictively sensory pursuit." --Booklist Booklist
Review
"Investigative visits with some gung-ho rose-lovers, who reveal their methods motivation and super-competitive ways. Scott, a journalist and rose grower in Portland, Maine, treks cross-country from her hometown to various sunny spots in California, stopping at the homes of numerous rose experts to find out why the flowers enthrall these cheerful, hardworking, deeply committed people. . . .Along the way Scott offers some fascinating bits of historical trivia. . .The laborious agonies of creating beauty, captured in relaxed, anecdotal prose." --Kirkus Reviews Kirkus Reviews
Review
"This fun read . . . offers the rose lover's equivalent of the film
Best in Show. . . . [Scott] observes this fascinating subculture lovingly. . . . You don't have to aspire to showing the world's best-ever 'Peace' to enjoy the ride, and Scott manages to sprinkle plenty of fascinating rose history into her brew."
—Houston Chronicle Houston Chronicle
Synopsis
Twice a year tens of thousands of otherwise normal people cut the prettiest blooms off their best roses and head into battle at the National Rose Show. Their goal? To win Queen of Show.
Doctors. Teachers. Sheet metal mechanics. Lawyers. Truck drivers. Men and women. These are type A gardeners, and for them this is a blood sport.
In Otherwise Normal People, Aurelia C. Scott follows the self-professed Roseaholics as they plan, prepare, and compete, battling high winds, Japanese beetles, and the finicky demands of their precious charges. Along the way we meet a former race-car driver who plans years in advance for each show; a forensic chemist whose collection of hybrid teas and miniatures tops out at nearly one thousand; a genteel woman who traipses through abandoned lots rescuing antique varieties; a doctor who woos his wife with his horticultural obsession and prowess; and presiding over them all, the ingenious Clarence Rhodes, creator of the world's most amazing garden contraptions.
About the Author
Aurelia C. Scott lives in Portland, Maine, where she grows roses and other flowering plants. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Fine Gardening, Cottage Living, and Yankee, among other publications.