Stop and Smell the Roses
The House had The rose garden that the garden club ladies made mention of on many occasion. They tended to the urban myth that roses are impossible to care for unless you are deemed and esteemed, an expert. The promise of mold and strange bacterial fungi will ravage the gifts planted in 1908 that was bestowed upon me when the title papers were signed, if I did not take heed.
Thankfully I did not register what They, the astute members of the G Club were talking about or I may have reconsidered moving in. I was already wary to the tending of plants flowers and all that. I like them. I just never had a desire or a talent for tending to them. I did not come into this world with a curiosity or a passion nor develop the intellect for growing anything other than my three sweet peas now turned teens. What to do with the pressure? How do I keep the roses alive? Maybe hire an expert to tend to the thirty plus bushes now in my care?
For sheer self preservation, I decided not to listen for the time being. Nothing new-check out my early report cards. I collect two large baskets and pair of gloves and some clippers. In full bloom and nearly my height I breathe in their magnificence, for starters. I could get used to this. I hand crank the rusty -may need a tetanus shot-lever to start the water drip to the roots-evidently the water can't spray directly on the roses and it must be done when the sun isn't overtaking us. I had listened up a little. It's 6 am and my people are all tucked in. I am bare foot in the dirt. I clip at leaf 5 or below-not remembering why this is the rule but it's one of the ten thousand Rose Rules. I have a basket of dead roses and a basket to fill my house up with. Each morning I collect ten or more vases worth. I need more vases and more friends to share these beauties with. Each bush is unique. I loved to collect the rainbows and sort them out like I am mastering a painting-something new with each piece of rose art. They become my paints and my canvas. I fall in love with them, well most of them. I talk to them-mostly about my children and what I am up to that day or evening. It seems cat lady strange to say but I feel like they listen. I keep my tending simple so I keep on with it. Clip, chat and make rose art in as many vases as I can find.
I decide nothing chemical can touch this treasure of mine. I keep clipping and loving them and that is it. I am not holding my breathe for an invitation to the Garden Club-what would I have to offer them? I love my roses and I tend to them? That's it. And they would have a list of the ten thousand to do's I missed to do to tend them. I am not a good meeting go-er anyway.
Three bushes withered away by July. I am to blame-Professor Plum did it I wish to say-but no I did. I didn't love them. I was not thankful for those lost treasures. They did not Lift me up-they had no scent and they didn't feel like a part of our magical world. I really didn't like those few bushes -I could not connect with them. I neglected them with my lack of attention and appreciation.
Funny how my rose garden became a little lab experiment. When we neglect having intention and thankfulness with our hearts toward something-it will wilt and eventually die. I was very very intentional when I met my next roses to fill the spaces of the gone bushes. We are quite famous for being the City of Roses so I spent hours up at our public gardens and breathed in and took photographs of the names of my favorites of this plethora of options-a bouquet buffet to chose from. I found the right ones and brought them home from the rose garden store place. Yes I play favorites with my roses, I can not help being more drawn to a color or fragrance, yet I do love them all now. And they thrive.
My simplistic tending routine brought me beauty and such peace that had escaped me in past days. I spent a decade racing around like a lunatic and now I get to do what my mamma always should-ed me to do-stop and smell the roses. And I did everyday from May through mid October. For ten years and now the baton has been passed once again. My roses Lifted me up with their beauty and their fragrance and their patience with my style of tending and appreciating.
Have you stopped and smelled the roses lately? How do you tend non conventionally to your garden ? Your life?