My grandfather was a wheat and bean farmer; his brother, a dry land potato farmer. Aside from the hard work and stress of farming, my grandfather’s favorite and relaxing pastime was growing roses.
Roses of fragrance, varying colors and shapes, grew and bloomed along every fence line of his front and back yards. All in the company of cherry, peach and apricot trees growing throughout. The growing season there was a time of delicious, fragrant abundance.
As I would walk along the roses, I would choose one into which I would gently plunge my nose, into its petals, and ever so softly and slow, would take in the intoxicating fragrance of its beauty and happiness. Life was indeed joyful.
Nowadays, I admire roses on display at the store, always hoping to find one that was able, somehow, to save itself from the numbing conditions under which roses are grown commercially. Just to take in that once-sweet fragrance of joy that is a rose.
Where has the fragrance gone? Taken by a world of time, urgencies, demands for instant gratification, competition for money and the notion of perfection.
Perhaps, acting on growing our own, we can restore both to the world and our lives the fragrance of beauty and happiness belonging to roses, which everyone, everywhere, longs for, and so deserves!
Sheila WheelerDolores
