Site Presented By
Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
How is it possible that a rose can still bloom in November, and how is it possible that I have fallen in love with you?
Feb 13, 2002 | The key to growing roses successfully is to encourage the development of roots, which should grow as deeply as possible, so please water liberally. Monitor newly planted roses carefully, as they will not have yet developed deep roots during the first growing season.
His mother grows roses. This is what he told me, and I think of this when I pass the wild garden in my neighborhood. I call it that because flowers grow in wild profusion at least six months of the year; zinnias wrap their arms around petunias, roses bloom next to weeds and poppies simmer in the tall grasses that are never cut. And when I walk by, I always say: "I love you, wild garden," and I do. I love it because it's chaotic, and if it could speak, if I could give it voice, it would not be polite, or well brought up. No. It would clamor for attention: "Look at me, I said, look at me! Am I not beautiful? Come. Come, pluck a flower if you dare," and sometimes I do: When no one is looking, late at night, as I wind my way home, I pluck one and float it in a bowl of tap water. Then I set it on top of my fridge so my cats can't get to it.
Your goal is to insure that rose leaves are dry by dusk.
I love you, wild garden.
And I loved this boy, the boy whose mother grows roses. On our first date, I took him to the wild garden, showed him a rose blooming there, so red and big and so fragrant, I was blushing.
Fragrant Cloud. The blooms are coral-orange, high centered, and one of the most fragrant flowers ever. Its green foliage is an excellent foil for the large blooms. This rose will blossom best in areas with long cool summers.
Even though it was late November it still bloomed. Extravagantly. Obviously it had no shame, obviously it reveled in its own beauty. Why was it still blooming in November? He said he would ask his mother, because his mother grows roses. Now it's early in the new year and the roses are not blooming anymore, but some still linger in the cold nights, and some might call this miraculous. I know I do. Even in the bright frigid morning air, they hang there, frozen, a still-life, but somehow still defiant.
Then, a month later, this boy called me up and told me, "I'm not falling in love with you." And I thought, How odd, because I have fallen in love with you. I didn't say this, but I thought it. I thought: How is it possible that a rose can still bloom in November, and how is it possible that I have fallen in love with you?
Meanwhile, the gardeners in my neighborhood have covered up most of their rose bushes with plastic bags. One tall vine looks like a man, a scarecrow, wrapped up tight in plastic with a bucket for a head. So surely his mother has covered up her roses, like he has covered his heart. Because I am just vain enough to feel that he has fallen in love with me, but that this has scared him and now he has run away. And I'll be honest and say that he wasn't a boy, he was a man. And I'll be honest and say I wanted to keep him and plant him in my garden. I wanted him to blossom every night, even in winter, inside my mouth, inside my head, inside my heart. I wanted him to bloom so extravagantly that he would wake up in the middle of night, smiling, a tear running down his face; crying from the sheer exuberant joy of being so firmly twined between my legs. How I would open to him in the morning, like the earth opens to spring. I wanted him to see I am as fertile as the vernal equinox. To show him that the roses that bloom are red and white and sometimes pink and sometimes yellow, and when they blossom beneath the sun, they fill the air, the rise above the garden. They possess such grace. Tell me, who would not want to witness such fertility, such beauty?
So, it's a good thing he could not see me pacing the small confines of my apartment, all the wildness washing out of me, because I was pacing and crying. It's hard not to feel the futility of love when this happens. It's hard, but I resisted. Even as I remembered the way he would grab me and push me down on the bed, enter me without a sound, like a queen receiving her consort; the way it's done in mythology, the passionate coupling, where words are not necessary. That's the way he made love to me. He didn't kiss my neck or my ears, he didn't tickle my feet, he barely had time to caress my breasts. Once at a bar, while drinking scotch, he let his hands run along the contours of my body; tracing the musical shape of my waist widening to become my hips, my thighs. That was lovely. At that moment I felt mythical, more like a rose than a woman.
