These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time in them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present above time.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Self-Reliance)
Rose-eing is very lovely-I want to Rose too
Like the lovely rose we all satisfy nature in all our moments. 🌹
🤩
🌹🌹🌹
Such stunning beauties!! And I think Mr. Emerson’s quote is just about perfect — we all need to BE more in the present to appreciate life, rather than fretting over the future or regretting the past.
When I saw the roses Emerson’s words came back to me and I had fun finding them again. What lovely reminders they are to stay where we are in the present, that we are ‘perfect in every moment.’ 🌹
Those are gorgeous roses – the smell would be wonderful. Now, roses are all that remain in my garden. When I had everything else cleared out last year, I left the roses, even though they have seen better days. I was sad he pulled out my very first rose bush from 1985 that I got for one dollar and has thrived all these years.
I do wonder how they smelled — they were too high up for me to get a sniff. For some reason I have never grown roses in any of my gardens. I read online that many of the modern roses will only live 6-10 years unless given exceptional care. Maybe that’s why yours have seen better days? Maybe you can find some new ones to plant. 🌹
That’s interesting about the newer roses not lasting as long … you remember the woman next door that propagated all those pink roses – that original rose must have been a heritage-type rose, long established and long living. The heritage roses are prized by gardeners and when I first started gardening I planted only tea roses around the perimeter of the yard. I had these big styrofoam “caps” that went over them in Winter and you had to weight each styrofoam cap down with a brick and mulch around the bottom of the rose. Those tea roses did live, but weren’t too showy and once a bud opened, that was it for a while. My first tea rose was the white John F. Kennedy Peace Rose. I replaced the tea roses with shrub roses which were much showier and hardier and on the other side with coneflowers, daisies and black-eyed susans. I did almost lose the shrub roses from that Polar Vortex – in fact, they were brown, brittle and no green to be had in the Spring of 2014. So I knew I could not pull them out as the four or five roses were as high as the fence by then. So I cut them down low and was going to have my big, strong handyman Jim pull them out – they all came back to life and I put in loads of fertilizer sicks and Miracle-Gro and they were okay, but truthfully have never looked as good as before.
Barbara, I saw this rose last week at NCBG, but you really saw it. And found its beautiful essence.
Thank you, Susie. I was looking for the jack-in-the-pulpit, and did find it, but these got my attention. 🌹