Officially, it's the Year of the Rose. Unofficially, every year is the year of the rose as far as I'm concerned.
At least 150 rose bushes grow in my garden. None grow well, because the soil is sand, rocks and clay. But they grow. They produce beautiful flowers from June to October. No two are alike. They range from a new "Princess Diana" to a gnarled old "Peace," in place 40 years. I'm told the "Peace" was the first modern rose, the grandfather to all hybrid tea roses. What marvelous progeny!
I rarely remember the names of my roses. (My apologies to hybridizers.) To combine William Shakespeare and Gertrude Stein (some combination!), "A rose by any other name . . . is a rose is a rose." Shakespeare mentioned roses at least 60 times in his work. Roses bloom through the words of many great writers.
They flower throughout history. And prehistory. A fossil rose appeared in rocks dating back 30 million years. Roses are native to the Northern Hemisphere, and so cultural legends feature roses. (Human beings took them to the Southern Hemisphere.) Over many centuries, roses provided key ingredients for medicinal products, perfumes and potpourri.
In Greek mythology, roses symbolize privacy or confidence. Romans placed roses on the dinner table or carved them into the ceiling to remind guests that conversations at the table were not to be repeated; hence, the Latin term sub rosa.
In the language of flowers, roses stand for love and beauty. They are delicate and inviting, yet thorny and defensive. They were popular in communist nations — rare symbols of beauty. I saw a particularly striking display in Bucharest, Romania, after the overthrow of tyranny in that abused nation.
I learn from my roses. I talk to them, and they talk back. In fact, I am working on a book called "Conversations with a Rose." It's about learning from roses and other growing things.
Like human beings, roses come in all colors, sizes and shapes. If a particular rose wants to spread out, even drastic trimming will not make it grow upright. And if rose's parents have five delicate petals, no amount of care, fertilizer or wishing will coax their offspring to form flowers with 40 petals. You can't make a climber from a hybrid tea É or a tea rose from a floribunda.
Long before today's cloning controversy, my mother used to clone roses. She would cut a rosebud, plant it with at least one leaf stem intact and cover it with an overturned fruit jar. After a couple of years, a new rose bush emerged. But it was never as healthy as the original, because in our climate, most roses are grafts. A beautiful but fragile stem is grafted onto strong but less attractive root stock. The result of this "marriage" is a strong bush with beautiful roses drawing strength from the rugged but hidden root. Both partners gain something from the arrangement.
Many productive human relationships are similar.
My wife uses roses to teach our grandchildren about drugs. She finds a beautiful rose bush with morning glory (bindweed) wrapped around its stems. She tells the grandchildren that drugs are like morning glory. Small tendrils look harmless at first, but if you don't eliminate the weed from the garden, it wraps tighter and tighter around the roses until life is choked out of what once were glorious flowers.
Roses generate optimism. I trim my roses in early spring. They look awful — broken down, dried out, darkened. It seems as if they will never grow again. But when the sun comes out, they miraculously sprout new growth from those old stems. The new shoots grow two or three inches a day. They look like red licorice. As a bud takes shape at the tip of a long, sweet, licorice stem, the red turns green. The stem develops strong internal fibers to hold aloft what will soon be a gorgeous flower. And when the flower fades, a new stem sprouts — always from a five-leaf juncture. The process continues.
The rose bush whispers: Never give up. Life is hard, but it's filled with new beginnings. When one flower fades, get busy producing another. Individual flowers may be beautiful, but it's the process which is spectacular, awe-inspiring and profound.
"Year of the Rose," indeed. Aren't they all!
G. Donald Gale is president of Words, Words, Words, Inc. He was formerly editorial director at KSL. He earned a Ph.D. at the University of Utah and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Southern Utah University. E-mail: dongale@words3.com