I will always remember my mother's white roses that bloomed every year beside the picket fence. She would often cut some to give our next-door neighbor, Miss Cogan. I was only seven years old when I first met our neighbor. To my surprise I would come to have a meaningful relationship with a retired schoolteacher in her eighties. In addition to our age disparity, I did not particularly like teachers. I remember helping her get the crystal glass vase from the cabinet under the sink. She was the first person ever to invite me in for tea. I pretended that I was an experience tea drinker. We talked about birds and nature - subjects that interested both of us. In her backyard, she had a stone pond with goldfish. I will never forget her pointing her boney finger at a plant that was just ready to bloom. “Do you know where this came from?” She asked me and giggled a bit. I shook my head waiting for her to continue. “A friend dropped it off.” She told me. She had my attention. Then, she explained that a migrating bird must have dropped it here, as it was not a plant found in New York or other northern states. She invited me inside and she talked about how Hawaii was originally just barren volcanic rock until passing birds turned the Island into a paradise with their droppings. We had tea and talked many times for the next several years. I learned more from Miss Cogan than I had from any teacher at school. Every summer when the roses bloomed by the fence, my mother snipped some flowers for me to give Miss Cogan. My mother always quoted Robert Frost and added her own twist: "good fences make good neighbors, but white roses make friends forever". “Milk-White Roses," is a hand-painted digital image and composite of original photos created in Spadecaller’s Florida Studio on 10/31/2021.