One day eleven years ago, our nearly two year old Nicholas woke up from a nap in the car and found we'd driven 200 kilometers away from the city home he knew, and had come to a house in the middle of woods and country fields. He wasn't impressed, and started crying. We showed him the bunnies, and he cried even more. We showed him the chickens and he screamed. We showed him the lambs and baby goats, and he howled. And still sobbing inconsolably, he refused to set foot in the house we'd driven out to see, the house that now - eleven years later - he calls home.
The landlady tried her best to make him happy. With surprising agility for a woman of her age, she climbed out on the high, narrow terrace just behind the house, and picked a rose with her bare hands. "There, there sweetie," she told Nicholas, "don't you worry. Here's a pretty rose to give your mom." Nicholas refused to take it, so eventually I stepped in and took it myself, thanking her profusely and apologizing for my child.
I think of that day every time I open my shutters in the morning and see those rose bushes - in full bloom this time of year - and still wonder how on earth our intrepid landlady was able to pick one of those roses bare-handed.
They have thick, woody stems, with the biggest, meanest thorns I've even seen. When I venture out on that narrow terrace myself to pick a rose, wearing my leather work gloves and equipped with my garden shears, I often end up with a scrape or two.
But they're well worth it: these big, deep-red, long-stemmed roses have an irresistible scent that lingers on even when the flowers have wilted.
This year I've started collecting and keeping the dry, fragrant petals. An open jar of petals in my wardrobe gives it a wonderful scent.
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Thank you Renee for hosting "Friday's Flowers": Pick some flowers, arrange 'em pretty, take a photo, post it to your blog, visit Friday's Flowers to share it with us.
