Roses and my heart

Roses.
If you noticed on my Aunt Ellen's Project plan list I listed planting roses.

I was really excited when I saw this article—in fact—it was one of the reasons I chose this particular issue of The Workbasket.

 Let me start by saying…about two years ago, my husband purchased me a rose bush. It was in honor of my yia yia «grandmother in Greek» who had just passed away. Her name was Rose and she was strong, beautiful, intelligent, ornery and always trying to feed you. My youngest is her incarnate.

My yiayia and papou-I never knew him, he died before
I was born. In this pic, I always thought he looked like Walt Disney.

I love her and miss her very much. It makes me sad to know that my girls will not know her.

Back to the rose bush…
It died.
It never really rooted and even if it had lived, we moved shortly after we got the bush «not brilliant planning», we would have had to leave it behind.

I have been thinking its time to get another one, but I am determined to not let this one die. I figured reading the article and then doing some other research would help to ensure that I don't kill this one. And it might help me decide what kind of roses to get.

However, after reading the story it says to plant roses in "late March through April. May is a little late for bloom the first year for bare root roses." And since I started this project May 1 and didn't read the article until the middle of the month…I guess I wont be planting roses this year. 

And then last night, I was thinking about the roses and I got the strongest memory of my other yia yia and papou «grandfather». Both of whom have also passed away as well.

My papou was a gardener—a vegetable gardener—but my yiayia was a flower gardener and she loved roses. We would spend weeks with them in the summer and inevitably at some point while we were there, my papou would hand me a cleaned out jelly jar half-full of gasoline (or some other wildly inappropriate liquid for an 8-year old to have). Then he'd send me over to my yiayia's rose bushes to 'get the beetles' «Japanese beetles». Basically, pick the beetles off the bushes and put them in the liquid to die.

Photo by Jim The Photographer via flickr

I always think of this yiayia as being more adventurous and fearless. She came to the US when she was 19 years old. Didn't speak a word of English. Came here to marry my papou-who was supposed to meet her at the airport but was running late so she found her way from LaGuardia to a meeting location.

My yiayia and papou.

I guess that's an extra reason to make sure I keep my roses don't die.