A Shaft of Light

A Shaft of Light

Monday, March 19, 2012

Roses

There's something fascinating going on in my bedroom. Not that - I'm a respectable widow lady, remember :)
Two months ago a very nice man in my life brought me roses on Valentine's Day. I never get tired of roses, even the force-fed, scentless variety we get in winter. I'll take them all. This was an especially lovely and large bouquet of pale pink roses so I divided them up putting them in different vases in the living room, in the dining room and in my bedroom.
They looked wonderful, really softening and lightening a room up in winter. I tried to keep them going as long as I could by snipping the stems off every so often so they could drink better - at least I think that's what they're doing. 
In about ten days their petals were dropping like large pink snow flakes and a day or so later I took them out of their vases, kissed them goodbye and sent them to the compost pile. All except for the roses in my bedroom.
This vase of roses was placed beside my son's picture on my dressing table. Along with a silver heart he gave me once and a heart-shaped stone I found on the edge of the Eagle River outside the apartment he lived in in Colorado - on the day I scattered a handfull of his ashes into the rapids there. These roses are still pink, still alive and have dropped none of their petals - six weeks or so after the others all died. This happens all the time. My house always has fresh flowers in it and there is always a vase of flowers beside Drew's picture. And they alway outlive the others by months. 
I've taken the light factor, the temperature differences between rooms and everything else I can think of into consideration, and I can come up with no earthly reason why they always outlive the others.
Thank you, sweet Drew.
 

3 comments:

jonjonmet said...

Delightfully strange. I toolove roses although sometime their live are alltoo short. My favourite one is aclimber(semi-rambler really) called Albertine. It is also pink but slightly coppery when in bud.

John

Somewhere Out There said...

I'll have to look for the Albertine - it sounds lovely. GB

Anonymous said...

Ginny, as you are not far from the E. Casey Foundation in Virginia Beach, I suggest you inform them of this happening to see if they will apply their resources to investigating it.

Arlo