“It’s a Tudor greenhouse,” Rosalinda said, emphasizing the “Tudor” like it held some special meaning for Rose. She lifted her walker over the sill of the door, and then together Rose and Rosalinda entered the balmy glass space. The warm, humid air was laced with scents. It seemed as if she were untangling a skein of fragrances. There was definitely a rose fragrance, but as she followed her grandmother, she detected an exotic, spicy smell that began to nip at the sweetness of the roses.

As she stood beneath the soaring glass roof, she felt as if she had entered a crystal castle. Indeed, there were three intersecting roofs, as there were three different areas of the greenhouse. Large cupolas floated like bubbles at the junctures where the roofs met, their glass panes tinted different colors. There was a calendar propped on an easel indicating which plants, depending on the time of the year, were to be hoisted on a rope-pulley system into the cupolas for exposure to the light. But there were winding staircases to these lofty realms as well. “This is amazing,” Rose said in a hushed voice, forgetting herself. “What are those?” she asked, pointing up to one of the cupolas where vines with white clusters of star-shaped flowers swayed in a spectral breeze.

“Jasmine, a tropical.”

Rosalinda was now perched in her planting chair, which was adjustable so that she could raise or lower it a foot or so, depending on which table she was working at. The tables ran for thirty feet down the center of the space and held tray upon tray of small plants and seedlings. Rosalinda explained that when they grew big enough, these plants would “graduate” to another area. This explanation began their longest conversation to date.

“Uh . . .” Rose was not quite sure what to call her grandmother. Granny? Grandma? Her best friend back in Philadelphia had called her grandmother Nana. Cook and Betty called her Mrs. A. Surely she shouldn’t call her that. She supposed Grandmother would be okay.

“Grandmother, why do you call it a Tudor greenhouse?”

“Because that’s what it is. It was an architectural style back then. And it’s not a kit, mind you. I designed it. After I built mine, they stole the design and made build-it-yourself kits. But none are like mine. Never could be. You can’t stuff a century into a kit.”

“A century?”

“Sixteenth,” Rosalinda mumbled. Her reply was barely audible.

“What?”

“Never mind,” she snapped. “I need you to thin out those ragged robin seedlings over there in that tray.” She pointed. Her finger was gnarled and bent, the knuckles swollen into knobs. “But before you do that, get me one of those pie tins and put some water in it from that pitcher. I have to soak some seeds overnight. Gives them a good start. Then you can do the thinning out.”

“Thinning out?”