HOW COULD I KNOW THEY WOULD ALL GROW- If there is one Alice Moseley print that screams," I am Alice Moseley," it would have to be this print. Donald LaBadie, the former art critic for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, was the first art critic to praise my mom's work and he was an early influence in helping her achieve recognition and acceptance in the art world. Donald liked my mom's work very much, but told her, in a helpful way, "Alice you don't need 14 chickens in every painting." Alice Moseley believed, to the depths of her heart, that if showing 10 chickens was good, then it only stood to reason that 14 chickens would be better. This also a applied to her cooking. My mom loved to cook and people would often ask her for her recipes. Somehow their end results never were as tasty as those prepared by Miss Alice. The reason for this disparity in result was that, when the recipe called for one cup of black walnuts, Miss Alice interpreted that to mean 1 1/2 cups, with maybe a few more thrown in for good measure. In the field of horticulture, one has only to plant a bulb in the Moseley yard to discover that, in the process of planting one bulb, you dig up 4 bulbs planted in the same spot previously. "How Could I Know They Would All Grow?" This saying defines the Alice Moseley version of better safe than sorry. In defense of her belief in overkill, one only has to look at her paintings; have eaten her pimento cheese or Texas orange cake; or looked at her yard on a summer day. On the day in 1980 that my mom moved into her house, there was, in the yard, at the base of the Oak tree beside the back door, a scrawny little fern. That fern is still there. The rest of the yard and its beauty is a credit to the lady "Who Did Not Know They Would All Grow."
