Mother’s Day Rose

Rosa ‘Old Blush’ is a fitting beginning for a tribute to all mothers on this day set aside in the US to honor them.This holiday is bittersweet for me.Rosa ‘Veilchenblau’ is just coming into bloom, as are many of the other old fashioned roses grown here.Rosa ‘Moonlight’ is a climber that is the favorite. It is not the prettiest, or fanciest or most colorful. But it does produce the most blooms throughout the year, is sweetly fragrant and carefree.Growing up in Oklahoma, my next door neighbor was an elderly woman with a large garden. She would give me bouquets of whatever was blooming to take to school for my teachers. On Mother’s Day, she would give us different colors of roses to symbolize whether one’s mother was living or passed. White roses were for those whose mother was no longer living.Moonlight is a white rose. That would be the color to represent the absence of my own mother. She died long ago when I was thirty years old. She was in Oklahoma and I was in Pennsylvania with three children of my own. It is a loss that can never be forgotten, even with my own joy of being the mother of four, the last born two years after her passing.My mother was not a gardener. Her mother and sister, my grandmother and aunt were avid gardeners. The three of them shared the same favorite flower though, the rose. My mother loved red roses the most. Shown above is Rosa ‘Cadenza’.Her favorite red rose was the hybrid tea R. ‘Chrysler Imperial’, above. Last year this rose was spotted for sale and planted in her memory. It has graced us with its first bloom of the year on Mother’s Day.
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Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out in the blogdom, and to their own mothers, and their own mothers and even to their own mothers.
Frances
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Last year in a post title ‘Post Frost’ we told the story of the purchase of R. ‘Chrysler Imperial’. Click here to see that post in its entirety. Below is the portion that explains the meaning of this rose for me.
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“Shown above, a sentimental purchase planted under the pines in the line of vision from my kitchen window over the sink, Rosa ‘Chrysler Imperial’. This pulls my strings on many levels. My father was a car buff. He liked all kinds of cars and especially liked to wheel and deal at the car dealerships. One of the most memorable cars he came home with was an early sixties palest green Chrysler Imperial, brand new, the top of the line, with tail fins that reached for the sky. It was a massive vehicle, impressive in its size, especially when used to give rides to a bunch of elementary school age kids to the movies. Oh baby. Many years later, as my mother was suffering from the final stages of cancer, my father bought five of the hybrid tea roses with the same name for her to enjoy. She loved the velvety petals, and the exquisite perfume
of this rose. The shared name of one of our many cars was just a bonus. When I saw this rose at Lowe’s, at first I couldn’t believe it was still in commerce. But there it was, even in bloom. It was planted about three weeks ago, and is still holding that bloom, even with the cold nights. I couldn’t not buy it, even though it goes against all our rules of rose buying, it is grafted, a hybrid tea,and not from a reputable rose grower. It is lovely.”
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F