Healing Homesickness in my April Rose Garden

Just Joey - a strange name for a rose, April 2024

After plentiful rain, no matter whether real or chemtrail induced, the garden is verdant and happy, all plants rush to outgrow each other, grass as tall as me, new trees hide on the flower beds... And roses. All these roses. I have more than 40 rose bushes by now, and decided not to add any new ones unless they are fragrant... Roses are like pets - they need food and water, and loving, tender care. And they pay back with enormous, profuse blossoms. But my first poem is not about roses, but rather the rosarians, and their centuries of bioengineering" - patient cross-pollinating rose varieties and watching them grow to pick the best samples and then repeat, until perfection smiles from the bush...

Oregold, April 2024

Oregold is truly golden and glorious, splendid blossom on short stem...

It seems that researchers started to check out the DNA and spectral content of roses in their never-ending quest for perfectly knowing everything about everything:

• "Molecular Evidence for Hybrid Origin and Phenotypic Variation of Rosa Section Chinenses" by Chenyang Yang,Yujie Ma,Bixuan Cheng,Lijun Zhou,Chao Yu *ORCID,Le Luo,Huitang Pan andQixiang Zhang published in August 2020 in Plant Genetics and Genomics (https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/11/9/996) - two different wild varieties of chinese roses gave rise to a multitude of varieties through cultivation.
• "Determination of Flavonoids and Carotenoids and Their Contributions to Various Colors of Rose Cultivars (Rosa spp.)" by Huihua Wan, Chao Yu, Yu Han, and Qixiang Zhang in Frontiers of Plant Science (February 2019). https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Flower-phenotypes-of-six-rose-cultivars-during-flower-development-Seven-developing_fig1_331043392. A review of color hues and intensity in six different rose varieties

Pop Art is quite small, less than a teacup, with a green button nose, April 2024

I admire the new rose bushes I plated last year - Pop Art, Moonstone, Crescendo, and Fun in the Sun that fades from warm amber yellow into pale clotted cream. . . 

"Fun in the  Sun" as it first opens is sometimes almost orange, April 2024

My garden is the perfect antidote for displacement. I wrote some poems about being lost after leaving the land of my ancestors that I did not know I cherished so much, when I lived there, but started to appreciate tremendously after my departure...  I'll space the poem out between rose blossoms, so reading it will be like strolling through my garden and listening to mockingbirds. Ah, I forgot, the heavenly fragrance of orange blossoms fills the garden this spring of multi-sensory delights....

Fun in the Sun- fades to pink, April 2024

Fun in the Sun, grandiflora rose is pinkish yellow, 

or sometimes yellow, depending on the soil, April 2024

Peace fades to being spotted, still cute with polka-dots.

A bush-full of "Peace" never disappoints with the profusion, size and color...

On Healing Homesickness

I crossed the ocean, mountains and deserts

to make this trade. Purple clover Trifolium 

of Polish meadows – for Montreal’s white Trillium. 

The song of the nightingale in a lilac bush at midnight

for the mockingbird in the red hibiscus at dawn.

The buzz of hornets – for hummingbird wings – 

now, that’s an improvement! Their feathers glisten

like jewels at noon. But there is more. Just one week 

of soft klapsy pears, sweet juice dripping down

my chin in Grandma’s orchard – for six months 

of pink grapefruit picked fresh off my own tree.

I think this delicate cream rose is "Faith" - one of my oldest bushes, still going strong.

Would I prefer removing pits from sour cherries,

a juicy job staining my six-year-old fingers 

to peeling pomegranates, freezing ruby arils  

for next winter’s feast?  Would I rather nibble on golden 

grapes off the trellis or cook strawberry preserves 

for the whole family – syrup of half water, half sugar, 

one glass per kilo of ripe fruit, simmering for 20 minutes 

daily for 3 days. The fruit must remain clear, red and 

fragrant while I keep removing szumowiny – dregs

that gather atop the boiling liquid like the dregs 

of society that rise to the top of politics and media.

French Perfume, so fragrant, with delicate white edges of soft pink petals

Beautiful longish wine-glass shaped buds open into full soft pink flowers.

French perfume, as it opens it looks like a tea cup for a bit... 

I traded two months of sunlight in Polish countryside

for a whole year of brightness under the pristine 

cupola of my California Paradise. Do I prefer the 

cloudless expanse of the bluest azure to the grayish,

pale skies, covered in mist more often than not? 

White sage and blue wooly stars in the Wash 

replaced marguerite daisies and cornflowers 

by the sandy path between fields of potatoes and rye.

This, I do miss – maki, chabry i rumianki. 

Double Delight has vivid two-color petals

California poppies are bright orange, not vermillion red. 

They bloom in early April, not July. Dragonflies are huge 

and orange, not blue. Still, they hover above sparkling

waters of a narrow creek just the same. Does it matter 

that I watch an orange monarch, not a blue queen’s page 

butterfly? The haphazard flight pattern is as delightful, 

the transience it evokes as nostalgic, regardless of color. 

My oldest bush "Love" is two-color, and blooms among pomegranate leaves.

Another "Love" in full sunlight, it is a bit more wine-red and off white, the photo has too much yellow in it, but almost good...

Two-color "Love" with white-veined vermillion red petals, so pretty and so abundant.

I’m at home in my garden as much as I was 

in the orchard of my Grandpa, climbing the walnut tree 

to read my book, hiding between its solid boughs, 

making pretend soup in pretend kitchen under a tall 

chestnut tree, weaving dandelion wreaths to crown myself 

the Most Enlightened Princess of Eternal Summer.

Electron is bright, "electric" pink, looks a bit pale in the shadow...

Electron is really electric, so intense in full sunlight! Fragrant, too... 

The velvety  Mr. Lincoln is more wine red than scarlet in real light.

There’s no way back. No reason to. My test of abandonment 

and betrayal took 60 years. All is done now. I passed. 

I count my blessings while listening to my neighbors’ 

country song, that seductive male baritone, on and on again,

punctuated with the same voices of finches, sparrows  

and crickets circling in the air. The same air, water, fire,

the same elements from whence we came into this

material presence, this glory of now. 

The final, pale pink stage of Rainbow Sorbet, I added the photos backwards...

A cupful of rose Rainbow Sorbet, fluffy and lovely as it fades...

This pink-red chaos of Rainbow Sorbet is close to fading, 

but it used to be orange-yellow when it first bloomed.

Rainbow Sorbet at first...

Rainbow Sorbet at first, opening yellow-orange, fading to pink and red.

Two cups of sorbet, yellow-orange and yellow-pink...

I'm particularly proud of the Rainbow Sorbet bushes, I picked them at $10 each, almost dead, they looked like they would not make and  yet... just look at this gold, orange, fuchsia and vermillion glory! 

So many buds of - this one is white-cream-pinkish, maybe the fragrant white-pink Crescendo...

Not sure what is this rose, a tree rose in yellow, orange and red - like Joseph's Coat, but that one is a climbing variety, with smallish blossoms...

Mr. Lincoln rose and rosemary.

A Spring Bouquet

 

Then. St. Joseph’s Day. The May 1^st workers’ holiday.

Crowds. Parades. Red flags. Red banners.

Even rows of red tulips arranged as battalions

of soldiers to guard the lawn.

 

Now. A perfect day to trim camelias,

their pink and wine-red blossoms fallen to the ground,

new celadon leaves wait for the companionship

of fragrant roses in a vase,

 

the pretty vase my Mom brought from Ravenna,

adorned with a rich array of relief flowers,

mosaic-like, so foreign on my California windowsill.

It travelled from Italy to Poland to Canada to LA –

a heirloom my children would not want. Silly kids

that left for their empty rooms with big screens and leather sofas.

 

I’m glad I’m here to chronicle every minute of every day,

every vein on every leav, every spot on every fading rose petal,

like liver spots on my hands, my Grandma’s hands.

 

Faded roses in a fading garden, picked for a day

of adoration, placed among the brightest celadon

twigs from silent camelias.

 

If fragrance is the voice of flowers, camelias cannot speak,

but roses sing the sweetest melodies that never end.

 

Oh, roses, my roses, roses – 

Here is white-red Love with Moonstone and fragrant cream-pink Crescendo

These new pink-white roses are very fragrant, too bad I lost the tag and forgot their name...

The closest I found is Crescendo, cream-pink with strong fragrance...

Moonstone has so many delicate pinkish petals, true hybrid tea, scent? tea.

Moonstone is cup-shaped first as it opens.

More Moonstone, with classic curved-out petals

Faith rose planted in 1956

Faith is quite similar to Moonstone, but less pink in hue, more creamy. One of my oldest bushes, 

creamy salmon pinkish in the middle, patented roses.

Just Joey, salmon colored, and tea-scented reminds me of Sonia, my favorite in Poland, also because of the character in Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky.