The Paris Review – A Rose Diary

April 12, 2024

I live on a mountain and am surrounded by mountains and last year I planted five rosebushes. Last year I dug five holes and it took a few days because the ground is hard where I live and it is full of bluestone and other rocks. In the old days they made use of the rocks that they found when they were digging into the ground. They built walls of bluestone to keep the cattle from going past the property line and you can still see many of these walls today and there are even some of these walls on my own property. These days the rocks are not useful to me at all and they were a big nuisance to my digging. Once the bushes were in the ground, four out of the five bushes from last year bloomed once or twice, and they had some nice flowers but it was nothing too spectacular. The blooms were small and the flowers were plagued by bugs and beetles and slugs. The beetles were the worst of the pests in the way that they crawled and in the way that they chewed on the petals. The blooms barely smelled like anything at all. The bush all the way to the right never bloomed and its leaves stayed small like fingernails. The lack of frequent blooms made every bloom feel like a gift. Now these bushes are more established and it is their second year. With another year come more established roots and with more established roots come more frequent and beautiful blooms. All of the rose experts and all of the expert rose gardeners agree on this.

I prune the five bushes from last year down to the minimum. I take my clippers and trimmed off any long leftover shoots or old growth that shows signs of disease. This will help the bushes conserve energy and produce healthy and strong shoots. The five bushes from last year look like five bunches of sticks in the ground. This season is sure to produce beautiful blooms.

April 13, 2024

Last year I planted three English shrub rosebushes and two hybrid tea rosebushes. This year I would never plant a hybrid tea rose. I know now that hybrid tea roses are tacky with their supermarket physique and their lack of a formal aroma. The hybrid tea rose is a Valentine’s Day card from the Dollar General and the hybrid tea rose disgusts me.

Instead I will plant four new English shrub rosebushes. The English shrub rose is closer to an old garden rose or even a wild rose than a hybrid tea rose or God forbid a floribunda. By the mid-to-late nineteenth century nobody in England was that interested in old garden roses and roses that looked wild or rough. Most of these old plants would bloom only once a year, which was not enough for the greedy Victorians, who wanted fat roses to put on their tables and on their dressers. The hybrid tea rose was created and when most people see a rose in a romantic comedy they are probably looking at some version of a hybrid tea rose. Hybrid tea roses bloom many times throughout the season and they can be bred in a large variety of colors, which was very impressive to the gluttonous Victorians and their French counterparts. What the hybrid tea rose gained in abundance it lost in charm and in romance and in fragrance. Most hybrid tea roses don’t smell like anything at all. The old style of roses fell out of fashion and gardens were filled with hybrid tea roses and their demented and mutated siblings. Roses started to look less like something Rilke would cry over and more like something Oscar Wilde would use as a pattern on his silk smoking jacket. Luckily, sometime around 1950, another British guy said enough was enough, and David C. H. Austin started to work to cultivate roses that bloomed more than once a season yet had a strong and decadent fragrance and looked and felt more like an old English garden rose. Thanks to Mr. Austin these roses are now widely available and beautiful gardens around the world can be filled with roses that look like real roses and the smell of roses can be inhaled all over the world including on my own property.

I preordered all of my roses online in January from David Austin Roses and there is a wonderful variety of amazing and beautiful roses available as well as many helpful guides for planting and care. It can be overwhelming to browse the David Austin Roses website due to the number of choices. I try to stay focused when I am choosing my roses and I try to not think too hard. I try to just trust my gut. In mid-April, the roses that I preordered are delivered bare-root and when you open up the box it looks like you were mailed a box of wet sticks.

April 18, 2024

It is cold where I live in April and where I live there can be snow until May. The sky is still winter blue like a polished stone. It is remote where I live and twenty minutes down the road is the road. I am leaving town for a month tomorrow so I must prepare the bushes from last year and plant the new bushes for this year. Normally I would not dare put new roses in the ground until the end of April as there is still a possibility of frost, but I will have to take the risk. Four of the bushes from last year are sending out shoots and one of the bushes might be dead. The roses from last year are planted right to the right of the house in a patch of grass just past the driveway where you can hear the creek that is a few feet away. The creek water is freezing and fresh and on early-spring days you can smell the moss on the rocks all warmed up in the sun. I spray the bushes from last year with a pesticide and I sprinkle some fertilizer around their roots and now this year there will be no beetles. Their roots are surely more established than last year.

I walk up the hill behind the barn and I dig four new holes and it is hard to dig because it almost seems like half of the ground is rock. My shovel makes a clinking noise against the big rocks and I have to find ways to use the shovel as a lever to get the big rocks out of the ground. I dig the holes and I do it quickly because it might rain later and I don’t want to dig in the rain. In each hole I put one of the new roses and I fill the holes with a mixture of dirt and fertilizer. I pat them around their base. The roses that I selected for this year are either purple or pink. They will establish their roots and if I am lucky they will give me a bloom or two and next year they are sure to produce even stronger and more beautiful blooms as long as they make it through the winter.

 

April 19, 2024

A late-season frost.

 

May 25, 2024

I am back in town and watered all of the bushes from last year which all look great except for the second bush from the left which is dead. Last year the bush second from the left produced more flowers than any of the other bushes and as a result it probably didn’t establish strong enough roots because it was too busy showing off. It was a hybrid tea rose and showing off was in its genes. The other four bushes from last year look great and they are leafing all around and I am sure that I will see buds soon. The leaves emerge from the shoots tiny and a dark red color and after a few days the leaves turn into a regular size and green.

The new bushes from this year are also putting out shoots and they are leafing. I water all of the bushes from last year and then I bring the watering can up the hill and refill it until all the new bushes have nice and moist soil to encourage their growth.

 

May 26, 2024

Lilacs bloom and they fill the air with lilac breath. I never knew I had so many lilacs.

 

June 4, 2024

I like roses because I know what they are. A white rose for a funeral and a white rose for a wedding. A red rose for a sentimental date. A dozen for an anniversary or a job well done. Roses are secret but they aren’t hiding anything. During the nineteenth century some Victorians would carry floral dictionaries. The chubby little Victorians would send floral messages to each other to decode. A bouquet of buttercups and basil and dill would say that I think you are childish and that I hate you and that I lust for you feverishly. Azalea and oleander would say that I want you to take care of yourself and that you also better beware. An arrangement of bird’s-foot trefoil would say my revenge is coming passive-aggressively. A green carnation meant that you were a homosexual. You don’t need any knowledge of floriography to know what a rose means. You know what a rose means now and you would have known what a rose means then. The history of the rose is in every rose. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet but it wouldn’t be a rose. I love roses and the way that they bloom in abundance with their smells that make you stop. I love their wilting and their life and their death. I love roses and when I am lucky, in my garden, roses bloom.

 

June 7, 2024

Buds on all four bushes. The dead bush doesn’t bud and it is obvious that it will never bud or bloom again. Soon the buds will burst from a bud to a rose. The burst is not fast, it is slow. It is sudden. A morning and a slight chill with the sun at full volume. The rose appears suddenly and it does not appear quickly. It just appears and one morning it is there. For now it is slow.

 

 

June 10, 2024

Flowers half-open this morning on three bushes. A half-opened rose has the strongest scent. The first bloom smells the sweetest and the first bloom of the summer smells the most of all.

 

June 11, 2024

Lots of wind and rain today. A storm like this could ruin the bloom of an entire garden. The storms come fast where I live. It will be dark and quiet and then you will hear the rain fall on the roof and it will sound heavy like crab apples. The clouds get trapped in the mountains and the mountain holds on to the clouds and the clouds spit their shower and the bushes drop their petals. I look outside and the storm is plundering the garden. Petals have fallen and are wet on the grass.

 

June 16, 2024

The most durable rose. The best climbing rose. The rose with the strongest scent. The best rose for health. The most colorful rose and the rose with the most red color. All the expert rose gardeners discuss these things on internet forums and in the comment sections of online rose nurseries. They discuss them but can never agree.

 

June 22, 2024

Bushes still blooming even after the storm. New flowers on every bush except for one. The bush the farthest to the right has only stunted buds. The flowers inside will never open. Last year it didn’t bloom either. If it does, the color of the petals inside will be a surprise. The bush might just need more water.

 

June 29, 2024

Each bush smells sweet in a different way, like different types of pie in a row of windows.

 

 

July 2, 2024

The bush with the stunted buds has bloomed out of nowhere. The dead buds were not dead, they were just dried-up. They only needed some good rain and now the buds are blooming in a vibrant orange. The orange of the bloom gets lighter as the petals go from the middle to the outside of the flower.

 

July 6, 2024

There is no bloom and the bushes just look like bushes. The flowers all died or their petals fell off and got eaten by bugs and beetles. You wouldn’t even know that they were rosebushes if you didn’t know better. It is now in between blooms. When you are in between blooms you don’t know when you will next see a flower and you feel guilty for taking the last flowers that you saw for granted. It could be weeks before the next bloom and it could even be a month. It could also be just a handful of days. The crab apple tree that hangs near the rosebushes is filled with small crab apples the size of grapes. They are too small now but in the fall they will be a small and normal size that is good for eating.

When it is in between blooms I look at photos of the roses from last year and remind myself what the bushes could look like if I am patient. When there are blooms I share photos with my friends. My friends say wow, and my friends say beautiful. They indulge me.

If a friend comes to visit the mountain when there is a bush in bloom I will say you are lucky, the roses are blooming. I will show my guest the bush and I will say see, a blooming rose, smell it. My guest will smell it and they will say wow or mm-hmm or so beautiful. My guest will turn and walk inside. Did they smell the rose? Did you smell it? My guests walk inside and pet my dogs.

July 12, 2024

Buds appearing again. A sweet love with a wide-eyed attitude.

 

July 18, 2024

All of the bushes are in bloom except for the dead bush. They all bloomed at once just like a ballet. The bushes by the house are all blooming and even the new bushes from this year have put out a few flowers and there are roses in different stages of bloom. Some just starting and some half-opened and some just opened all the way. The second bloom can make the first look lazy.