Flowers and Garden
Jessica and Michael loved flowers and botanical gardens and made it a point to visit them wherever they travelled. Their particular favorites were associated with home: the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis and Kirstenbosch (Wikipedia), situated at the base of Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa.
Jessica had a long-standing interest in gardening and tending flowers her entire life. Whether at home at Alta Dena (or much later, at the Gatesworth) or at her synagogue, she sought to beautify her environment and derived great satisfaction in doing so.
She learned a great deal from her master gardener friend, Rena Schechter, and then further educated herself about flower species, which varieties would do well in the Missouri climate, how to care for them, and more.
Mount Vernon, New York
After World War II, Jessica's dad, Jack, transformed his Victory Garden (described on the Cooking page) from vegetables to flowers. Rachel recalls Jessica telling her that Jack was an entirely self-taught gardener. He learned from books in the public library. (Jessica had commented, “He grew up on the Lower East Side which had mostly cement; what kinds of gardens would he have seen?”) This may have been a source of Jessica's lifelong love of flowers and gardening.
July 4, 1958: Wedding day with family
Jessica, Jack Kramer
with Jack's hydrangeas at right.
Belle and Arnold in full image (click)
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At Home (Alta Dena, St. Louis, Missouri)
These photos cover a more than a half century of Jessica's flowers at her and Michael's University City home.
In August 1968, Rachel was the flower girl for the wedding of her and David's babysitter, Carolyn Shapiro. Rachel is shown here with her own bouquet and special dress in front of the roses growing in the back yard, near the kitchen door.
They moved into the house in June 1964, and fairly early in their time there, Jessica acquired a stone planter (a gift from her parents) which they placed on the front porch. This photo from April 1977 shows David the morning after his Bar Mitzvah, when a brunch for out-of-town guests was held that Sunday morning. The planter was still in use decades later (shown at the far right of the "August 2022 front flowers" photo below).
This pair of photos shows that the flower bed between the driveway and the front path was being planted with interesting flowers as early as August 1968. (This is likely a "first day of school" photo showing Ellen L. (a friend who lived across the street) with Rachel. The companion photo is from August 2022, about 6 weeks before Jessica moved out of 364 Alta Dena.
In 2014, Michael shot a series of photos of Jessica's front path flowers growing from late May to mid September. Although it was never intended as a time-lapse, per se, I (David) cropped them to be as similarly-framed as possible and created this 18-second video.
[Click the Play triangle icon, then look for icons which allow you to see it much larger (varies by browser). Hit the Escape (Esc) key or click the 'X' to close out of full-screen. There is no sound to this.]
2014 time-lapse of front flowers (18 sec)
Photos by Michael
The next two photos are yet more photos of the flowers next to the front path, with Jessica posing next to the flower bed, in July 2005 and August 2016.
There were flowers all over the front and back yards, not just the
path leading from the front porch. This July 2008 photo was taken the weekend of their
50th wedding anniversary, with another morning-after-party brunch for out-of-town
family and close friends. This photo was obviously taken to capture the people in it,
not the garden. Nonetheless, one can see the mulch-delimited flower bed running along
the perimeter of the back yard, shown at right.
Detailed who's who caption of July 2008 photo (Click for details)
Front row: Rae Friedlander Sank, Romy Sank, Cordelia Sank, Noah, Rafael, Jonathan, Rochelle Davis.
Second row: Sheryl, Betty Wachtel (partially hidden, in blue), Jessica, Harriet Meier, Rachel,
Arnold Kramer.
Third row: Natasha, Walt, and Zara Schalick, Jim Wachtel, Michael, Art Meier, Neil, David.
The last image shows the flowers growing in front of the living room bay window.
Around 2005 they had a Hunter in-ground (pop-up heads) sprinkler system installed, which was programmable as to when it operated, allowing flowers, gardens, and the lawn to be watered to better survive the brutal St. Louis summers.
In Jessica's last several years in the house, her friend Deb Mutchler did a lot to take care of the garden, as the work became more difficult for Jessica to do alone.
Missouri Botanical Garden (MoBot)
May 1994 Michael, Jessica, (J's brother) Arnold,
and David at the Japanese Garden
Photo by Ann Kramer
June 1979: Jessica's mother Belle, Jessica, and cousin Ruth Blumberg, at the rose garden
Photo by Michael
St. Louis is fortunate to have a world-class facility in the Missouri Botanical Garden (Wikipedia), aka "Shaw's Garden." This was only from 7 miles from their University City home. Jessica and Michael loved the place, were members for decades, visited in all seasons, and brought untold out-of-town visitors there. Besides the family photos shown here, there are many other images with family and friends at "MoBot."
In addition, she was a docent at MoBot for about 6 years, as described on the Community and Volunteering page elsewhere on this site.
Nov. 2016 Jessica and Michael
in Rose Garden with Dale Chihuly yellow glass
Feb. 2017 family@MoBot for
belated 80th birthday for Jessica
Detailed who's who caption (Click on this line.)
The family gathered in St. Louis in February 2017 for a belated 80th birthday celebration for Jessica. From left: Rafael, Jessica, Michael, Rachel, Jonathan, Sheryl, Noah, and David in front of the Climatron at MoBot on an unseasonably warm winter day (Feb. 19, 2017).
April 2024: MoBot tulips with Sheryl
(Dutch-style bicycle prop in foreground)
Story behind Jessica's T-shirt
Click to expand)
Jessica is wearing a NASA Eclipse T-shirt, because the day before this photo
(April 8, 2024), she travelled 120 miles to Cape Girardeau, MO with David and Sheryl
to see a total solar eclipse, her first! (David's
SmugMug gallery of the eclipse)
Bais Abe (Bais Abraham Congregation)
For about a decade (2004-2013) Jessica volunteered for a leadership role in examining the state of the landscaping for the entrance to Bais Abe. In her filing cabinet was a folder with all sorts of her detailed notes: what specific plants would thrive in sun versus shade, which should be in containers, which would be annuals versus perennials. There were notes about how high the flowers or plants would grow, as well as their lateral spread. There were also recommendations about which bushes or trees should be trimmed versus those that should be removed entirely (usually due to disease). There were numerous receipts from items she had bought at local nurseries. And she was on hands and knees doing the tending and planting, as part of the team that actually planted all these items, although that got harder to do in her later years.
In late summer 2025, five months after her passing, Bais Abe held an event to dedicate their side garden in her memory, complete with a plaque.
The Gatesworth
Sep. 2024: Balcony flowers at The Gatesworth
Photo by Rachel
In August 2022, sixteen months after Michael's passing, Jessica made the difficult decision to move from her house in University City, where she had lived since 1964, to an independent living apartment at The Gatesworth continuing care senior community. An important selection criterion for her was to have place for a garden. Thus, she was delighted to find a unit with a balcony, with sliding glass doors leading from the living room.
She filled the balcony with an overflowing collection of potted flowers, including some in hanging baskets. Her gardening friend Deb Mutchler was of great assistance in setting this up.
With this balcony, she was also able to continue her love of having cut flowers in vases around the apartment.