Petals
The days when I could pluck petals from daisies, one by one at Grandma’s house, ended when I was two, maybe three years of age.
But blossoms of every sort have tugged my heart all my life. I never found a flower I did not like, and most of them I loved.
Why? Well for one thing, they are beautiful. For another, they are symbolic.
The days when I could pluck petals from daisies, one by one at Grandma’s house, ended when I was two, maybe three years of age. But blossoms of every sort have tugged my heart all my life. I never found a flower I did not like, and most of them I loved. Why? Well for one thing, they are beautiful. For another, they are symbolic.
When my daughter was four years old, she placed a rose on her Grandma Pearl’s grave. She placed a rose there because she loved her grandmother. A rose, symbol of love, of love everlasting, a rose was no less at home than the handfuls of dirt we cast upon her grave. Grandma Pearl had a rose garden, a lovely rose garden, from which her son took a bloom to give to me each day to profess his love during our first spring together fifty-two years ago. There were white roses, red roses, pinks, and even a lavender Sterling Silver rose. It was his favorite and became mine, too.
My grandmother loved roses too. They lined the walkway to her front porch, and a few found their way into her backyard. My mother had roses, too, but after she died, only three remained: a red one, an orange one, and a yellow one. I watched them each spring and wanted to pick them, but Mom said no. So the blossoms stayed on the bushes. When we moved away from that house, there were no more roses until this sweet young man wooed me with one rose each day. When he brought me the first flower, the door of my heart fluttered open.
The roses he brought me that year catalyzed a love somewhere in my spirit. My spirit was happiest in the presence of roses. And so the petals of my heart opened to this young man, and my spirit loved his. We chose Sonia roses for our wedding canopy. The petals were a lovely peach, and the fragrance was sweet and a little spicey. They mingled with gladiolas and spring greens up to the poles and across the header of the canopy and filled my bouquet . . . and my soul.
When we moved into our home, there were three rosebushes along the driveway – two lovely white ones and one red climber in between. The latter only bloomed once each year and it sent runners everywhere in the garden, even under the driveway and under the house, to propagate itself. Over the years, we took out the privet hedge and added some new roses in its place: a dark red damask rose with the richest perfume, and two multicolored roses, mixing oranges and yellows. Then one year my sister gave us a Peace rose, a lovely white rose tinged with pinks and yellows. We added a deep orange and a yellow rose until the driveway was fully lined with rosebushes. We added tiny dwarf roses another year along the border of the lawn.
We added some roses to the back garden also. First came a rainbow of climbing rosebushes across a side fence where we had pulled out the ivy. It started with a climbing Peace rose and ended with a deep red climber at the other end with pinks in the middle. We planted another prolific damask red rose just outside our daughter’s bedroom window so that she might always have roses to fill her soul. Another time we put up two rose arbors as doorways to a seating area. Red and pink roses grew up over one arbor, apricot and burgundy climbers lined the other. We lined the seating area with yellow, purplish, and pink roses. We added a pot filled with yellow Poet’s Wife roses. Simply delightful! When Grandpa Harvey sold his home and Grandma Pearl’s rose garden was going to be pulled up, we took six bushes from her garden and put them along one wall of our home where they could peek in at us through the dining room window. Among them: her Sterling Silver rose bush.
A few years of California droughts had been hard on some of the roses in the front garden, so a few years ago we replaced some of the weakened bushes with new roses. We took out over half the lawn and added bush roses and a bulb garden complete with daffodils, iris, and lilies. We added three pink roses in large pots to finish the border between grass and bulbs. We chose roses and irises with wonderful scents. In the evenings in spring and summer, I walked along them, inhaling nature’s aromatherapy. Neighbors out walking stopped to smell the roses and take in the beauty . . . and perhaps fill a bit of their souls, too.
