Smell the roses ...
If you need to quiet the whirling brain, this is the ticket.
I had two meetings in Portland today, the second one not far from the spectacular Portland Rose Garden. What to do with ninety free minutes? Smell roses.
The Rose Garden has HUNDREDS of roses, most planted with several per variety. It's a sea of pink, red, coral, lavender, yellow and white. We're approaching peak bloom, just in time for the Rose Festival. Even though many people were visiting, the spaciousness and grandeur of the setting (overlooking the city with Mt. Hood as backdrop!) allowed each of us to be alone with our rose.
In my own former rose garden I planted about 50 different roses, carefully chosen after great deliberation. When you grow roses you get to know each plant intimately because they require daily dead-heading. You notice the unique bloom, fragrance and growth habit of each variety (not to mention their susceptibility to various fungoid plagues).
Despite the installation of hundreds of new roses I've never even heard of, I recognized many of my dear old friends. If you haven't grown roses, all the white ones might look alike, but once you've lived with Iceberg, you see it is as unique as your brother's face. Once you've grown the pink Queen Elizabeth you could pick her tall straight stems out of a sea of pink roses. The multi-colored Jacob's Coat wound up the pillars of the Berkeley Rose Garden for decades, and there it was, my old friend on a pillar in Portland. The gorgeous Just Joey, the color of cantaloupe, still smells like rose distillate. Ahhh.
I feel so much better.
JustJoey
I had two meetings in Portland today, the second one not far from the spectacular Portland Rose Garden. What to do with ninety free minutes? Smell roses.
The Rose Garden has HUNDREDS of roses, most planted with several per variety. It's a sea of pink, red, coral, lavender, yellow and white. We're approaching peak bloom, just in time for the Rose Festival. Even though many people were visiting, the spaciousness and grandeur of the setting (overlooking the city with Mt. Hood as backdrop!) allowed each of us to be alone with our rose.
In my own former rose garden I planted about 50 different roses, carefully chosen after great deliberation. When you grow roses you get to know each plant intimately because they require daily dead-heading. You notice the unique bloom, fragrance and growth habit of each variety (not to mention their susceptibility to various fungoid plagues).
Despite the installation of hundreds of new roses I've never even heard of, I recognized many of my dear old friends. If you haven't grown roses, all the white ones might look alike, but once you've lived with Iceberg, you see it is as unique as your brother's face. Once you've grown the pink Queen Elizabeth you could pick her tall straight stems out of a sea of pink roses. The multi-colored Jacob's Coat wound up the pillars of the Berkeley Rose Garden for decades, and there it was, my old friend on a pillar in Portland. The gorgeous Just Joey, the color of cantaloupe, still smells like rose distillate. Ahhh.
I feel so much better.
JustJoey
posted by JoieDe at 8:45 PM
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