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.

In Praise, Awe of the Mountains

Poetic inspiration comes from outside - the world - and inside - reflections and emotions. For me, being very sensitive to shapes and colors and the beauty of nature. California mountains are a major inspiration. I come from Poland which is a flat-country, with a small area of mountains in the south (the Tatras at the northernmost tip of Carpatian Mountains), some hilly terrain in the Foothills, and then flat all the way to the Baltic Sea. Fields, meadows and copses have their allure, the bigness of the sky above, if you walk out away from buildings, is astounding. The skylark's song falls on the ground like a rain of little bells. You do not even see the singer so high above your head...


But to live in California means to live in the mountains. Los Angeles has a bad rap internationally, as the city of crime, car chases, barbed wire, and graffiti. Nobody tells us before we come here of the amazing gardens, hills and mountains: San Gabriels, Santa Monica, Verdugo Hills... They criss-cross the terrain, so that everywhere we go we'd see something beautiful and breathtaking.

I live in the foothills, watch the mountains from my kitchen window, go for long walks in the dry river-bed of Tujunga Wash admiring the ever-changing colors and shapes of the mountains. Being aware that there are no cities for a while and they stretch for miles into the desert is a part of the allure of our little hermitage.

Interlude – Of the Mountains

I.

I love you, my mountains,
oranged into sunset
of embarrassment.

Your cheeks aglow –
what sin you’re hiding,
in waterless creases,
what guilt?

Or is it first love
that makes you shine
with such glory?


The sunlight in California is so different from northern areas of Canada, or Poland. There it is pale, often grayish, frail. Here it brings a rainbow of colors to everything it touches. Everything is more vivid, more intense, under the bright rays, in summer or winter...

II.

Bare mountains –
no – old grassy hills
worn out by wind
and torrential rains
shine in stark morning light
like exquisite folds
of red-brown velvet
covered with stardust.

Snow whitens the slopes
sculpted by crevices.

The earth sighs
in her sleep.


When my mother came to visit in 1999, she thought that these mountains, without a protective layer of trees, all exposed to the elements, looked like heaps of dought and still bore imprints of the giants' hands. I liked that image so much, I put it into a poem.

III.

I’ll never tire of these mountains
made from the earth’s dough
by the hands of a giant
who kneaded a cake
that was never finished,
the dough left in piles
on the table of smooth fields
surprised by their sudden end
in rich folds and falls
decorated with the icing of snow
on cloudy winter mornings.


The sunsets are astounding and the skies glow. It is the clearest and the most spectacular in the winter, after the rain washes away the smog. But the fire-season knows its glories, too, the darker, wine-read hues. The next part of my Interlude, from Miriam's Iris (Moonrise Press, 2008), was actually inspired by a memory of looking at a different set of mountains, rocks falling apart in the Monument Valley.

IV. (A Monument of Time)

Submerged in the sand of time,
a continent from beyond
sinks in the last sunset.

Shadows move briskly.
Soon, a gentle coat of oblivion
will cover the ridges.

The desert sleeps
devouring life.
Clocks stop.

The rocks are on fire
boiling over
into the evening sky.

Sand rises slowly.
The mountains drown
in silence.

The pastels can be seen in January, our spring. With clouds, like scarves on the hilltops, with fresh greenery of new grass on the slopes, the mountains are ready for a party. I put that last poem on a postcard I printed, with the photo above, for my participation in the 2010 Fourth of July Parade of Sunland-Tujunga. I gave them out to everyone at the parade and still do giveaways from time to time. A cute little trifle, just to make your day a fresher/newer day....

Interlude - Of Bliss

II.

I’m delighted
with newness of this day –
fresh, new grass and
fresh, new leaves and
fresh, new clouds
in fresh, new sky
Washed clean by rainfall,
colored by ever-brighter light
of green and blue,
hope and innocence,
the hues of my love.
Even the mountains wear
their fresh, new dresses
with pleats of ridges and gullies
waiting to be ironed out
by the breath of wind and time.

But the mountains are temperamental, they shake, they burn, they fall apart. Living in their shadow is like living with an elephant in the room, or a giant rhinoceros in the backyard. The danger and beauty are celebrated in my occasional poem for An Award Ceremony for community volunteers who helped with January floods, organized by City Councilman Paul Krekorian. Called three days before the ceremony, I came up with the following poem. I now adapted it to the fire season, for the nature of the danger may change, but the threat remains.

Mountain Watch

They are a bit vain, aren’t they
these mountains of ours, still young.
They like being washed by the rain,
making themselves pretty for sunset.
Wet soil turns into a mudbath
for these giant beauties.

When they stretch and practice
their dance moves, our houses crumble.
Water jumps out of toilet bowls.
Aunt Rosie’s favorite crystal vase
shatters on the floor. The mountains
shake boulders out of their skirts,
lose weight. Rocks slide into our backyards.

We stand watch. We are ready.
Neighbor calls neighbor: “Are you OK?”
A friend you did not know you had
stops by. The danger looms.

In ancient Rome, guards had to hold
one hand up, with the finger on their lips
in a sign of silence, attention. I read
about it in a book, standing on my shelf,
in a crowded row of treasures
I hauled across the ocean, from the
old country to an unknown world.
I’d hate losing them to mud.

When the mountains dress in red
robes of fire, to dance in the night
rites of destruction, sometimes
it is too late for treasures. An old man
lost a hundred years of memories,
when his family heirlooms –
pictures, tchotchkes – burned to ashes.
His life spared, he still cries for what
he cannot not bring back.

We are lucky. Storms came and went.
The neighbors lived, the houses survived.
We were ready: moved out, moved in,
moved out, moved in, awakened
at midnight, sheltered by the goodwill
of unknown friends. We watched.
The storms passed. This was a good year.
We will watch. The aging beauties
will dance again.


Maja Trochimczyk and Paul Krekorian at the Awards Ceremony, June 2010.

_____________________________

All content, poetry and photos (C) by Maja Trochimczyk, 2010.
Mountain poems were all published in Maja Trochimczyk, Miriam's Iris, or Angels in the Garden, Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 2008.
Mountain Watch was published in The Voice of the Village, July 2010.