Why
Roses?
By
Gaird Hamilton
National
Award of Merit winner
With the rain pelting down
and the wind whipping the tops of the basically bloomless roses covering
a vast portion of our yard, “why all these roses” can be
a silent question in our brains. We can easily visualize all of the
work involved in pruning, spraying, weeding, fertilizing, and so forth,
and it is hard to see in our heads just how gorgeous they will be during
their long season of bloom. Like that old saying in sports, “what
have you done for me lately”? While this kind of thinking isn’t
really fair to the roses, we may fall victim to this attitude from time
to time during the short stormy days of winter.
Probably the best cure for
this type of thought is if we have a great big album of pictures of
our roses in full bloom in all of their glory. There is no flower that
can beat the rose when it comes to beauty and also length of bloom cycle.
If we have no such pictures, try and remember those pleasant days with
friends when we showed them our garden, or had a barbeque in the yard.
Maybe we won a trophy or two at the rose show which would help our memory,
or thinking of all of the bouquets which brightened our house during
the year.
If we are
still having our doubts it may be that we have one of several problems
which can affect rose growers. We may have over extended ourselves in
our eagerness to have all of the new beauties which are shown in those
great looking catalogs. In this case we may have gotten to the point
where we just have more roses than we can handle and still enjoy them.
This is not a step to be taken lightly, but if such proves to be the
case rather than learn to resent the time taken by our roses it would
be better to downsize. By carefully analyzing just which roses are bringing
us the most pleasure, and which have failed to live up to their advanced
billing, we can get our rose garden back in the area of pleasure.
This is not
the fault of the roses, it is merely a trait which we have tended to
develop in all phases of our lives here in this affluent country. Sometimes
we get so many possessions that we are almost overwhelmed by them. Our
time can also be overused by a multitude of activities. Just remember
one thing when we are solving these problems. Roses and gardens in general
are a wonderful place to unwind, to find peace and tranquility. That
is what it should be all about. We should be able to commune with our
inner beings while pursuing our activities in the garden whether it
be working or walking, or sitting, or lying there watching the bees
and hummingbirds. This is a place to forget war, forget the problems
at work, forget the long commute, or anything else which is causing
stress to us.
Our rose garden, to fulfill
all of these missions, must be fitted to us and our needs. It should
be big enough to give us the exercise we need, enough to keep us busy
when we should be busy. Roses are wonderfully tolerant in their demands
on us. If we want to have them be plants which cause the cars to slow
down as they drive by, and people to admire month after month, they
take quite a bit of pruning, spraying, fertilizing, mulching, weeding,
and so on. If we are willing to take some defect but still have some
very nice additions to our yard then we just have to at least prune,
fertilize, and hopefully take out the worst weeds. Most of us are probably
somewhere in between. Roses are the symbol of love. Grow them in such
a way that we can feel love, show love, and love what we are doing.
|
