Roses, roses, roses. Thank you for roses.

Beautiful, resilient and a bit of fight about them.

A flower than can melt the heart and then draw blood.

England has even had civil wars over a white and red rose.

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I’ve always felt a strong link to roses. That’s not surprising since I come from the White Rose County. Yet the link is stronger than that.

The last present I gave to my partner was a rose. Since then that delicate white rose has been intrinsically linked with my grief journey.

We have another rose which is decades old and has come from my partners childhood home. So it’s a link with Hawklads past. Family members now gone.

I also often look at a rose and see symbols of life. Today I was looking at a rose and it made me think of friendship. Some of the rose buds seem to go on forever. If you are lucky in life you may find one of those friendships that do that, always special, always beautiful, everlasting. Yet you also see rose buds that fail to bloom. How many times have I had thought that I had found a great friendship yet for whatever reason things never seemed to take off. Then you come across those roses which burst into life, producing the most stunning flowers, yet within days they have died back and faded. Just like those friendships which seem like they will be the best ever and yet suddenly they end – wonderful but not ever lasting, so short lived. You just never know with roses and you just never know with friends.

Today it was friends but on another day I will see roses symbolising another part of my life. I’ve done it with grief, parenting and hope. What will the Rose show me tomorrow?

61 thoughts on “Thank you Roses”

  4. Roses and friendships…
    …need regular care, watering, weeding out the weedies, deadheading the dried up blooms…
    …and I am sure that talking to them helps a lot…roses and friends alike.

    But the joys of all the effort, the sweet aromas, the colour and loveliness….all worth the effort.

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  7. There is something magical about roses. They stand for resistance, beauty, setting limits to others, grace, life, strength, comfort, infinity, love, gratitude,… so much! I am not surprised, so many people are drawn to roses. Btw. your photos are so beautiful!

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  9. I hope those roses remind you that even if life is thorny, it’s still beautiful and smells sweet!
    I love wild, untended rose bushes. A little trimming, maybe… but just let Nature do Her thing!
    Florist roses just aren’t the same. I guess that could be a metaphor for freedom and being you true self.😉💌

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  11. Something wonderful about roses. We’ve a sort of remains of a what obvi was a rose border –garden was a jungle and I saved what I could. Like that I thought.. I am no touching those things, one is like a tree. Anway, they have survived in so many ways including my complete lack of care of them and they are quite bonnie.

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      1. I abso keep this garden. ( the last was beyond torture and the entire row of that terrace struggled , the steps being near the river were death traps alone in the winter.) but my rule is basic. I may keep it cos it gives such pleasure, but at heart it must keep itself, cos I am not a gardener. And it does. The roses are fab that way.

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  16. Seemingly random question but based on watching another old episode of “Escape To The Country”: in the countryside, are there limits on the number of cats/dogs you can own? I wonder every time I fantasize about moving to those homes with tons of yard and/or views.

    Here in the city, the current legal limit is 4 animals (including strays that are fed!) but supposed to increase to 6.

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  17. I do love a rose, especially the journey from bud to bloom. I see beauty in every phase – when the petals are tightly wrapped together, as they slowly begin to loosen, then when the rose spreads out in glory. They’re quite moving.

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  18. Roses are so beautiful. And so are friendships. I have one friend who I met in Kindergarten, and 70 years later we are still friends though we don’t live in the same city any more so don’t see each other often. I visited her a couple of weeks ago. The same day I visited a friend who lived across the street from us and we were born about a month apart. We played together for several years until we moved. I hadn’t seen her for well over 60 years. Her sister came to her place when she heard I was coming, so I saw them both for the first time in all that time. I had totally lost track of her until I decided to search on FaceBook.

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  22. I like that you mentioned resilience. When we bought this house the previously owners had planted roses all over the yard with no rhyme or reason. Bush roses next to tea roses, etc. I love roses but have since tried to hack up and remove a few of the bushes, and guess what? They keep coming back. Nothing can stop them… maybe their resilience is a good symbol for these times. 💕

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