UNIT 18 Roses

I had a prejudice about receiving flowers.

Even though I had asked my colleagues
and friends never to get me roses,
they still did it from time to time.
It was hard to conceal the disappointment
that distressing me when I saw that exquisite white box
tied with a beautiful velvet ribbon.
"A little flower coffin" was the first thing that came into my mind.
It was true they were grown to be cut down just for joyous moments,
but even so as I looked at the flawless bright buds waiting to open,
I still couldn't stop thinking about them
sitting on my dining room table,drying up and dropping petals.
And all the while I was thinking,
"pretty soon I'm going to have to throw those roses in the garbage
and I'll feel bad about that too."
They could be pressed in a book but either way
it was all the same to them.
So pretty much I had avoided roses altogether
until recently when about twenty rose bushes came into my life.
The only instruction that came with the roses
was to trim them off to where there were five leaves.
Being somewhat overwhelmed about
what I considered the difficulty to take care of the roses,
I anxiously pressed for more reliable information
and augmented knowledge in rose cultivating.
Rather than received mystical flower knowledge from the experienced gardener,
I was told simply to water them.
As with all things,I decided to do my best
and see what would happen.
The first roses of the year came in like a row of fire.
Quite unexpectedly in the late spring,
a row of rose bushes on the side of my house
bloomed with a chorus of hundreds of pink flowers.
There wasn't much smell to them but as I had found out,
every different type of rose had its own maturity period.
While the other thinner bushes were taking their time growing their buds,
these prickly weedy roses were past maturity and ready to be trimmed
Knowing nothing about the physical structure of roses
except the simple tips from the previous gardener,
I went to shear them with a pair of kitchen scissors.
Grabbing a withered pink rose,
I looked at its lateral stem.
Every few inches was a set of leaves.
Those farther away from the flower had five leaves
while those closer had only three.
Where the set of three connected to the stem,
there was a small bud—nothing much,just a point of color.
There was nothing like this near the set with five leaves
but following the instruction,
I cut off the rose here losing bud and all.
After several hours' work,
a pile of rose petals and stems lay on the ground
and I swept them up without a bit of remorse.
Often while trimming the bush,
I would watch the tiny world inside.
Spider webs hung inside branches
and while the spider usually hid from the scissors,
I examined their homes.
Some of them were dried and torn from their original foundations
while others were fresh and shiny.
Even though the roses bloomed wildly in my yard,
like grass in the pasture,
I still didn't feel completely confident in my knowledge of their care.
One day while passing by a garden shop
I went in and browsed through the flower section.
After getting bored with the how-to pamphlets,
I wandered around and ended up by the floral coolers.
Down at the bottom were canvas bags,
bucket and small pails crammed full of ladybags.
The bag didn't move too much
like you would expect a bag of 500 insects to do,
but I took a bag to the counter for no other reason
than pure curiosity and the joy of having in my possession
for a few moments a bag full of the gentle fairy tale creatures.
I learned something that day.
While waiting at the counter,
recollecting about the youthful joy of acquiring even one ladybug
—a childhood memory was more precious than gold
—I asked the cashier in bewilderment how anyone could catch so many.
I learned that these ladybugs are grown,not caught.
On the car ride home,
the bag began to buzz and move as it warmed up.
Once home, I just had to look at the ladybugs' spots.
Each one had four or six.
Did that tell the sex of the bug or its age?
I carefully cut a large hole in the canvas
and held the bag over the rosebushes.
A few ladybugs weakly flew a few inches from the bag
then dropped on the nearest branch while the majority,
still remained crawling over each other inside the bag.
After being shaken out of the bag,
the rest hung slowly on the bush.
A gust of wind blew across,
and their instinct made them fly away in all different directions.
Even though it was not the mass motion I had expected,
for one brief moment I felt the joy of a liberator,
as a compensation for their action.
Trimming off the roses became my daily work.
After a time I went back to where I had trimmed before
and noticed how the bush had grown.
Even if a branch was cut to the set of five leaves where there was no bud,
soon a small colored claw would appear,
grow outward and eventually become a rose.
Sometimes two would grow from the same branch
and these in turn would create two new buds each.
I began to notice a pattern and started experimenting.
By cutting back to where the closest bud appeared,
no matter how small,
and no matter how many leaves it was attached to,
you could double or even triple the number of flowers.
I also found you couldn't hurt the rosebush
no matter where you trimmed it.
The decision where to cut had to be made with figuring out
where the most buds would likely appear
if creating more flowers was the goal.
Sometimes the decision to trim
was made on balancing the branch one way or another
because the roses themselves added a lot of weight.
Sometimes it became necessary to trim back huge branches themselves
when a bush grew over its boundaries.
Roses, I found out,were not only delicate adornments
for special occasions
but also a representation of a kind of vigorous and enduring spirit.
A rose branch held up by a bough,
grew up to the roof on my house then descended down
flecking the brick wall with delicate,
red or white dots like a watercolor.
There is one rosebush that's still a mystery.
It never grows above two feet high
and its two erect branches are no thicker than a pencil.
Every few weeks, however,
thirty of so huge red buds simultaneously pop up on its branches.
Watching this bush is like watching a comedian
you know who is going to slip on a banana peel.
One day the buds all open and the bush arches from the weight.
It has done this time and again with no damage to the branches
so I just leave it alone.
Apparently this bush has some serious business to work out
and why should I interfere?
So I guess I don't feel so bad anymore about the roses
that have dried up on my dining room table.
For sure I've trimmed back a hundred times
that many since for my bushes.
I'm still not accustomed to the thought of boxed flowers
and maybe now I realize why.
Roses that come in boxes are a mere fragment of the experience
and perhaps the least rewarding part of the whole.