A Kiss From a Rose

Heart of Gold -- watercolor and ink.

I have a love/hate relationship with roses. I have three distinct memories associated with roses. My parents grew roses when I was a kid. I tried to make rose perfume. Well, sort of a rose perfume. I threw scented rose petals into rubbing alcohol and let them steep. What I got was rose-scented rubbing alcohol. Not exactly what I expected. It would have been smarter to steep them in vodka; but, my parents didn’t drink alcohol. Kids...

My second rose-scented memory reminds me of my grandmother. Her house backed up to a working farm that was sprayed with some chemical that smelled like roses. To this day, my grandmother’s house comes back in perfect clarity whenever I smell that roses.

My third memory is rose-scented Turkish candy. I was in a Middle Eastern market one day and stumbled across Turkish candy. Naturally, I had to have some (we were adventurous eaters in my family). I’m sure that they were quite excellent to most people. To me, they reminded me of insecticide and grandma.

So, with all of these negative associations with roses, why am I considering planting roses? Well, I’m thinking of Rugusa roses. They have beautiful flowers with nasty thorns. The beauty is that they don’t get a lot of the nasty diseases normally associated with roses. That means no chemicals needed to grow them. In addition, they produce enormous rose hips loaded with Vitamin C. You can dry them and use them later to make tea. Stuff like that is important on a farm. We are miles from things like doctors and grocery stores. A reasonable amount of self-reliance is required. So, the roses are going in… Somewhere where it will be hard to brush against them.

Sometimes in life, things don’t work out as expected. Ok. They almost never work out as expected. When Seal wrote “A Kiss From a Rose,” he wasn’t happy with it and tossed it aside. Years later, it became a mega hit. When I wrote this post, I was confident that I could get a decent rose painted with watercolors. Nope. Several tries. Not even close. I guess that a single watercolor class doesn’t make you brilliant. Who knew? So, instead, I drew a heart. Enjoy.

Seal -- A Kiss From a Rose
A Kiss From a Rose