One has to love creatures so exotic and lavishly endowed. Summer's roses are glorious creatures, be their flowering an interval lasting a few days, or one lasting all season long. All artful curves, lush fragrance and velvety petals, the blooms are lavishly dappled with dew at first light, and they're a rare treat for these old eyes as the early sun moves across them. If we (Beau and I) are fortunate, there will be roses in our garden until late autumn, and we hold the thought close.
The word rose hails from the Old English rose, thence from the Latin rosa and the Greek rhoda. Predating these are the Aeolic wrodon and the Persian vrda-. At the beginning of our wordy adventure is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root form wrdho- meaning "thorn or bramble". There we have it - the loveliest and most fragrant of all flowers are named, not for their looks or perfume, but for their prickliness.
Most of the roses in our the garden have thorns to reckon with, but none more so than this morning's offering, a Canadian Explorer rose called "William Baffin". My thorny friend is a hybrid Kordesii developed at the Central Experimental Farm here in Ottawa during the seventies, and it is armed and dangerous. One of the most enduring climbers, it blooms until late autumn and is hardy as far north as zone 2b.
Viewing this exquisite specimen from the bedroom window, I find myself falling in love with roses all over again, so lovely as they mature, so graceful as they fade and wither and dwindle, their petals falling away and fluttering to the earth like confetti.
There's a bittersweet and poignant aspect to one's thoughts after the summer solstice, and I remember feeling the same way last year around this time. Here we are again, poised at the beginning of the dark half of the calendar year and readying ourselves to potter down the luscious golden slope to autumn and beyond.
Bumbles love roses, and they spend their sunlight hours flying from one to another, burrowing into the hearts of the blooms for nectar and kicking their pollen bedecked legs in rapture. The air is filled with whirring wings and happy, buzzing music.
My pleasure in the season and a gentle melancholy seem to be all wrapped up together in falling rose petals and blissed out bumblebees. Such feelings are to be treasured—they are elemental expressions of wonder, rootedness and connection, the suchness of all things. How sweet it is, thorns and all.
2 comments:
Never having truly loved roses until becoming old, I am over the moon seeing the tiny yellow buds on my first David Austin rambling rose "Malvern Hills" planted bare root in Aoril. Fingers crossed I am still here in five years when she reaches her glory.
There are wild roses blooming along the south side of our driveway and I lean over and inhale their heavenly scent; so beautiful.
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