A rosey life
Perfectly imperfect rose buds and flowers in my rose garden.
I beg your pardon
I never promised you a rose garden
Along with the sunshine
There's gotta be a little rain some time
When you take you gotta give so live and let live
Or let go oh-whoa-whoa-whoa
I beg your pardon
I never promised you a rose garden
These opening lyrics of the song ‘Rose Garden’ were made famous in the 70s by American country singer by Lynne Anderson. I like country music, and grew up on a healthy diet of Nashville’s finest, in addition to a wide range of other music genres. Nanci Griffith is my all-time favourite country singer-songwriter. I still listen to her timeless music all the time. Talk about deep …
‘Rose Garden’, sometimes called ‘I never promised you a rose garden’, was written by American musician Joe South in 1967. Nobody sang that song quite like Lynn Anderson. To think that her producer originally objected to her recording it because he did not consider it to be suitable for a woman to sing. Those were the times. I’m glad he was convinced otherwise. I particularly love the renditions she produced later in life — light-hearted but imbued with the realism that can come with a life lived.
Here’s Lynn Anderson live in 2011 (attributed to apostlepaul62, as posted on YouTube)!
‘ …I never promised you a rose garden’. Those are words you may have heard before, proffered as encouragement or consolation — or worse! ‘Life is not a bed of roses’ — that’s another one. These words suggest that a rosey life, the aspirational bed of roses, the rose garden, consists only of beautiful fragrant flowers, healthy green leaves and blue summer skies filled with fluffy clouds of niceness. A life without irritation, difficulties, disease, loss, lack, sadness, heartbreak or pain. Depending on how you were brought up, it might well be what some of us have wanted and longed for, what we pray and work for, at some point in our lives. If not in this world, then the next. Looking back, I admit that there was a time when, in the depths of my being, I unrealistically clutched on to the hope of a perfect nirvana tomorrow in this realm, replete with the perfect occupation, a perfect home, a ‘perfect’ me. Those days are over. My perspective is now clothed in realism, as determined by the reality of what I see to be within my sphere of existence. I look life straight in the eye and see it for what it is. This correction doesn’t mean that I don’t strive or hope. It just means that I now know that the beautiful rose garden of life has beautiful fragrant flowers it, with plenty to enjoy — AND thorns too. Naturally. Since rediscovering gardening I have learned that most rose bushes do indeed have thorns. Roses and rose bushes with few or no thorns are the exception rather than the rule, marvels of modern hybridisation efforts.
I actually do grow a few roses that are marketed as being ‘thornless or near-thornless’. One is named ‘Iceberg’. Rosa ‘Iceberg’ is a floribunda rose that was bred in 1958 by Kordes. It has lovely medium-sized, double white flowers - and only the very odd thorn! It’s very popular in the UK. Another one is Rosa ‘Burgundy Ice’ and burgundy-wine coloured relative of Rosa ‘Iceberg’. Here they are, on my plot this year:
I fully embrace the broad sentiment of ‘Rose Garden’, the song. You’ve indeed got to take the rough with the smooth and somehow try keep rolling along. Life can be tough. That said, I have no problem with being promised a rose garden. By life or a person. You can promise me as many rose gardens as you want. And I’ll take them all, because I know that life IS a rose garden, with beds of roses within. We’re not talking a bunch of polytunnel-grown, blemish-free, gift packaged stemmed roses or a bowl of fresh rose petals here. We’re talking ROSES. Real rose bushes of every kind, growing in open ground, exposed to the elements.
Beautiful, and all mine!
I’m getting better at it, but it is hard not to get pricked or scratched on some part of your body at some point when planting, weeding around and pruning rose bushes. Certainly not when you have more than 100, which is the case for me (happily!). It hardly bothers me now, except when the wound becomes inflamed or infected.
So pricked and bloodied, I carry on, joyfully looking after my roses. The reality is that life - a good life, even - may well have a heady scent of perfume and beautiful silky-soft petals at times. But it will have thorns too. There will be thorns in life, however they come to be. Some thorns will gouge deep, traumatising tissue and drawing blood, and even becoming infected. Nonetheless, I continue.
Thorns are the challenges we face in life. Challenges that make me ask ‘Why?’ and wonder ‘Again?!’. Some thorns in life are abhorrent and must be excised immediately by any and all means possible, and prevented from harming others who share the bed of roses of life. Realistically, different approaches will be required for different types of thorn.
Thorns will never stop me from enjoying and caring for the roses in the rose beds in my garden. I must admit that I am somewhat less resolute when it comes on to the rose garden of life though. Nonetheless, I do try to live this life, secateurs and protective gloves at the ready, so we (my rose bushes and I) can do what we are both here to do - grow and bloom! At times the rose garden of life threatens to become frighteningly overgrown and wild, with each constituent fighting for survival, at increased risk of disease, a scenario where only the fittest can survive and truly thrive. As the song says’ ‘Along with the sunshine, there’s got to be a little rain sometimes’. Starve a rose bush of sunlight, nutrients, water, space, and the chances of it thriving to produce beautiful healthy blooms and foliage in abundance are greatly reduced. You find a way to do the necessary work, and fill yourself with the right inputs, or you face the serious risk of failing to thrive in this world, this bed of roses.
Rosa ‘Adolf Horstman and the deep red Rosa ‘Highgrove’ on one of my beds of roses this summer. There are towers of pale yellow Sisyrinchium striatum flower clusters in the background.
Gardening has taught me a lot about life. It has helped me to put my experiences into perspective, and yes, to hope. If my life and actual gardening efforts do not produce the results I was looking for this season or this year, as long as the world exists and I exist, and am corpus mentis, there will be a next year, and other windows or seasons of opportunity. Until it is over.
Looking at my life through this lens, I say,
‘Everything really does look rosey now’.
Rosa x odorata ‘Mutabilis’
