By Jerelyn H. (I-F-Letty)

Roses mean romance and Valentine’s Day right?  So what am I doing writing about roses in June well… June 12^th is Red Rose Day, a day to celebrate the queen of the garden.  So why June, you ask?  All roses in the northern hemisphere begin blooming in June.  All roses come from wild stock and the breeding of roses is an ancient practice.  Fossil evidence says the rose dates back 35 million years, and recorded cultivation of the rose began about 5000 years ago, roses have even been found in Egyptian tombs, and in the written records of Chinese Emperors.  Roses were not only valued for their beauty, but for the perfume that was extracted.  At one time rose oil was so sought after that it could be used as currency, but the plant has medicinal qualities as well.  Rosehips (the fruit of the rose) are high in vitamin C, and have been used in teas and tisanes for millennia. Old roses pre-hybridization; bloomed only once a year in late spring/early summer, and were nearly always pink.  The modern roses developed in Europe during the 18^th and 19^th centuries were imported from China these are the ones that were highly prized, for variation color, petal types, and long stems but most of all for blooming repeatedly.  There is now something like 30,000 varieties.

But Red Rose Day has a deeper meaning and it has come to symbolize the fight against Cystic Fibrosis.  Or as a little girl, I will call Carrie called it 65 Roses.  Why 65 roses?  Because, that is what Cystic Fibrosis sounded like to a little girl suffering from this genetic disease. My education about CF started one day in June nearly 20 years ago, I moved all my roses into a proper rose garden early that spring.  I had carefully prepared the site and after several years of collecting had a lovely variety of roses, I had moved them to their new home, and spent a great deal of time coddling them to make certain that moving  them had not damaged them. There was one rose I loved, and still love called:  “The Squire.”  It is the color of ruby red velvet.

Carrie’s grandfather happened to be our mailman (he had taken this route so he could take his lunch break at his daughter’s house and to be able to see his granddaughter every day.)  Denny the mailman was a kind person, at that time and too my thirty something self, I considered him to be an older gentleman; I suppose that he was a bit older than I am now. He would always remark on my gardens, for he too was a gardener, and I was just studying to become a Master Gardener, my yard was my studio, as well as my laboratory, Denny understood my passion for gardening.

One day he asked if he could bring his granddaughter over to see the roses, as she lived around the corner and she often walked by, of course I agreed.  Several days later they came by and to my surprise Carrie was a girl I recognized, I had seen her at my kid’s school, and running around with the kids in the neighborhood, she was a several years older than my daughters, but was as small as my eldest.  Well after about 10 minutes Denny had to get back to work but Carrie stayed to talk to me about the roses.  She smelled them all, and I named them for her, and at last I asked her which one she liked best she went to “The Squire” I like this one best she said,  so I cut off  3 blooms and wrapped the stems in wet paper towel, so she could take  them home.  That is when she said to me and I will never forget it. “You know that I have 65 roses?”  I know she must have seen my puzzlement, because she continued on.  “It is really called Cystic Fibrosis, it is a disease that affects the lungs that is why I get to come home from school every day for lunch and lots of time I can’t go back, because of my treatments.”  I knew so little about what “the treatments” entailed; but when I asked, she told me very matter of factly, that her mother had to beat on her chest and back to break up the congestion there.  At that time there was a new machine that would do it, but she had yet to get one.   She had to inhale medicine through a nebulizer; even now I cannot do justice to the description of what she had to endure.  “I hope to grow old she told me, kids like me they don’t get old, we die young and that is why I don’t have any brothers or sisters, because they could be born with it too and Mom and Dad don’t think it is fair.”  But if I get older I want to grow roses too.  That “if” affected me deeply “if I get older.”

Over that summer she came to visit quite often, and then she moved onto middle school, our visits came less and less often.  Denny retired several years’ later, life went on.  Nine years later I was walking down her street and noticed the moving van, in front of their house.  Carries father was putting things in his truck so I went over and introduced myself; I asked him how Denny was and about Carrie.    Carrie would have been 20 and I feared his answer.  To my relief he said that she had married 3 years ago, he said she was living in Portland Oregon, and that he and his wife where relocating there as well, after wishing them happy trails, I continued on with my walk.  Married at 17 what were they thinking? Then it hit me, “we die young” she had said.  So she was going to experience life in what time she had. Why not love and marriage?  I was happy for her, and that she was making a life for herself in spite of the uncertainty of her future.

So Red Rose Day can mean many things, roses symbolize passionate love; they symbolize hope, and remembrance.  Roses are still the favorite flowers for brides, and June is still a favorite bridal month. But every time I see a red rose I think of “The Squire” and of Carrie and I hope that she is still on this earth and that she has a rose garden, and I hear. “You know I have 65 roses?”

For more about CF go here: http://www.cff.org/

For the short history of the rose and its interesting road to domination, go here: http://www.ecbdflowerstore.com/108091.php
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with this web site, I just thought their history on roses was the most interesting and concise.

SixtyFive Roses: A Sister’s Memoir by Heather Summerhayes Cariou

The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red by Ridley Pearson

Snow White and Rose Red by Patricia C Wrede

Red Red Rose by C Rowe-Myers

Blood Red Rose by Maxwell Grant

Snow White & Rose Red by Ed McBain

The Red Rose Box by Brenda Woods

Tags: Book Recommendations, Book Suggestions, Members

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 at 6:42 am and is filed under Holidays and Special Dates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.