Roses

But he who dares not grasp the thorn

Should never crave the rose

Anne Bronte

The fossil record tells us that wild roses flourished thirty five million years ago. The first known planting of roses was along the routes taken by nomadic peoples. What a way to mark your progress or your way home. No boring ditches or stone walls. The world’s oldest living rose bush is thought to be a 1000 years old. It continues to bloom on the wall of Hildesheim cathedral in Germany.

How roses got their thorns and original red colour is the stuff of legend. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, is said to have created the rose which arose from her tears and the blood of her lover Adonis. The Romans believed that Cupid, offering a rose when trying to bribe the God of Silence to hush Venus’s amorous escapades, made the flower into a symbol for secrecy. Roman dining room ceilings were often decorated with roses, reminding guests to keep secret what was said during dinner. I think my mother must have heard of this legend. She insisted that whatever was said indoors didn’t make its way onto the street. We didn’t have an ornate dining room ceiling, just a few precious roses in the garden space protected from the more pressing need to grow vegetables.

Roman high society women used petals much like currency believing that they could banish wrinkles if used in poultices. The beauty industry continues this fruitless battle against ageing only nowadays face poultices, which suggests something festering and contagious, have been replaced by the much more alluring face mask. Use the mask to cover up the lines of experience and time passing. Peel it away to reveal the face of a previous age. Swapping one mask for another.

Rose petals were often dropped in wine because it was thought that the essence of rose would stave off drunkenness. Progress in this area can be measured by the range of flavoured mixers available to disguise the alcohol kick of an equal number of spirits. It seems the psychology of misuse of alcohol doesn’t change, just the method.

Victorious armies would return to be showered with rose petals from civilians that crowded the balconies above the streets. My father in law, a Second World War veteran, often mentioned the disrespect shown to him and his returning comrades with the issuing of a demob suit wrapped in brown paper and string. Mind you I’m not sure rose petals would have appealed to his rather stoical Yorkshire nature.

Roses are mentioned in Christian and Buddhist religious texts. A red and white rose in a church flower arrangement are meant to represent the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

Roses permeate the low places as well as the high. In America the word roses is often used as a code word for dollars in prostitution; makes the exploitation of women sound a little more savoury. At the other end of this particular spectrum roses are an enduring symbol of love. In both situations they communicate an unambiguous message without the need for words. Roses have long been associated with the passing from this life to whatever afterlife people believe awaits. Petrified rose wreaths have been found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs. Long before I came to love roses I was exposed to this link in boarding school. There was a graveyard in our Juniorate that served the needs of the De La Salle Order in Ireland. Slightly ironic that entry into and exit from the Order were housed in the same place. The tradition was that a rose was planted when a Brother took his final vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. When a Brother died a rose was removed to the orderly flower beds that bordered the various areas in the school. The local convent and Parish Priest also benefited from this practice. I know because we were given the job of relocating these thorny emblems. In my time in school the space in the walled graveyard was evenly divided between the roses and the uniform white crosses. I can still recall the cloying scent as we passed on our way to the playing fields. Thirty five years later the roses have been relegated to two straggling rows in the corner. Meanwhile the Grim Reaper’s harvest is marked by a proliferation of the white markers of comings and goings. I have yet to come across a clearer portrayal of the withering of religious dominance in Ireland.

In this tearaway world roses slow me down. A rose makes me want to pause, to look at every bloom, to lift those heads bowed after the last shower, to make sure I don’t deadhead too early in my quest to encourage more blooms and of course to be careful not to disturb the odd bee in my closed eyed appreciation of their scent. At this pace I notice, and generally avoid, the scourge of their thorns. Roses, planted together, complement each other in shape, size, colour and scent. They still maintain an individuality that attracts my attention and careful observation. If only we could apply rose type individuality to people. We could gradually make redundant the collective and destructive tags of colour, race, sexuality and religion.

 A bed of roses ls like a good collection of poetry. Each rose, like each poem, has its own identity; each bloom, like each word, has a role in giving meaning to the whole. Each poem, like each rose, offers me its own surprise. The tight buds of roses before flowering remind me of poem titles in the content section of a book, pale and slightly secretive indicators of what is to come, but demanding patience from me as a gardener/reader for the whole to be slowly revealed. Good poems, like beautiful roses, also allow me enough freedom to appreciate them as I wish.

I love all sorts of music. Depending on the mood I can swing from Heavy Rock to Classical, from Irish traditional to Country and to various popular artists.  So Gershwin, Hot Chocolate and Abba with roses named Rhapsody in Blue, Hot Chocolate, Super Trouper and the catch all Rock and Roll have found a space in the rose bed. To indulge every Irishman’s need for a song of parting and loss Rose Danny Boy offers me its red semi double blooms. I have my eye on one or two more of similar ilk to flesh out my musical bed of roses. Roses for me are self-indulgent if nothing else. Gardening and hedonism sit comfortably together. Add in my retirement and a new Trinity is formed. I don’t have a favourite rose or poem. Favouritism changes as each rose develops or wilts or as the mood takes me. Similarly my ranking of poems changes with each reading. I am unapologetically fickle in my appreciation of both. Tying yourself down to favourites is, I feel, a bit limiting in that it demands a continuity that rarely exists in life. It denies the chance of future surprise. Enjoy your appreciation for its own sake; let the emotions released wash over you. Don’t waste valuable time trying to explain them. There’s nothing to be gained.

A neighbour of mine who came across me planting roses told me that he had never liked them. Slightly surprised; I mean how could anybody not like roses; I swallowed a rising sharp response and asked him why; he said he didn’t know. He conceded that the blooms were ‘nice’; he chauvinistically declared that thorns didn’t bother him, he just didn’t like them. Intrigued I enquired when he was first aware of this. He then explained that his father wouldn’t entertain them in his garden at home, that they required too much looking after. His ideal plant was one he could ‘stick in the ground’ and forget. He asked me what I thought he should buy for his lawned space. I encouraged him to wait until he was well into retirement and then plant a tree, safe in the knowledge that he would never have to sit in its shade. That was the end of that conversation and I presume any future requests for my gardening advice.

Before I completely claim the high moral ground of love of roses I have to unburden myself of a memory that still haunts me and in gardening terms probably qualifies as criminal. Our first house had a small street fronted garden that the previous owner, a much older man, had filled with roses. Apart from the obvious enjoyment of the aroma and the complementary colours I knew nothing about their care, not to mention how and when to prune them. So when my wife suggested that we create a paved area in the middle with a surrounding border of the roses I only heard the first part. One Saturday she left for her shift in the nursing home. She returned tired to a paved front garden with a couple of token pot plants, not a rose in sight. They had been bagged and taken to the local tip. I talked about the future ease of managing this concrete desert in contrast with my arm scratching attempts at nurturing the rose garden while she mourned the loss of beauty. Any bluster I may have used to neutralise her displeasure was blown away when a neighbour told me that the previous owner had planted roses when his wife had become housebound. She liked to sit in the window space to enjoy her favourite flowers. When I look at my current rose garden I take some consolation from earlier beliefs that even the worst sinners can and do repent.

Anything that has survived for thirty five million years deserves some respect from a species that has only been around between five and seven million. That’s if we include the first apelike creatures to walk on two legs. We modern humans have only been around about two hundred thousand years. The way we are treating the planet we are definitely, in horse racing terms, a long shot if we hope to match the rose. When you next encounter a rose garden it doesn’t matter whether you are a pessimist that complains about roses having thorns or an optimist that rejoices in the fact that these particular thorn bushes have roses. Pause and spare yourself some time. Lift a bloom or two and appreciate the intricacy of this most beautiful of nature’s design. Move back, stand upwind, close your eyes and let your nose do the work. Now the link between roses and perfumes makes sense. Look at the rambling rose scrambling over and blurring the rigid lines of support so carefully assembled by the gardener. Watch the clusters of bright blooms nudge each other in the breeze like bazaar traders competing for the best position to show off their wares to the passers-by. Note the green shoots, so prominent in winter, now relegated to mere conduits of nourishment from the unseen roots below; indentured servants awaiting the end of the flowering season. Be assured, that with little attention, the same colour cascade will return next year. This sensual treat is there for you to indulge, for you to repeat, for you to create in your space.

Growing and tending roses is a bit like life’s journey. Anne Bronte summarised it well when she warned:

‘But he that dares not grasp the thorn should not crave the rose.’