Book Entry 7: 1955 The Rose Garden

1955

The Rose Garden

I’m assuming it was around this time I fell in love with my mom’s rose garden.  I remember my dad weeding, fertilizing, watering, and tenderly pruning the rose bushes in the garden.  There were 4-5 rows of roses more than half the length of our house.  We had yellow, red, orange, white, and pink roses.  We had roses that were stripped and one that had shapes of different colors on the petals.   One year we even had a lavender rose but mom or dad didn’t like it so it disappeared after the first year. 

Later, when I was 9 or 10 dad “let me” take over the irrigating for the summer.  Boy did I feel important!  Dad had perfect little furrows for each row.  He showed me how to put the end of the garden hose in a folded burlap bag so it wouldn’t dig a hole into the ground and let the water run until it got to the opposite end of the row.  When dad sprinkled the fertilizer beside the bushes each month, he’d take a little rake and scratch the ground so the fertilizer could “get in.” 

Dad loved to care for the roses, in fact, as far as I can remember dad did all maintenance in the garden.  I remember getting up very early one morning to use the bathroom.  On my way back to bed I looked out of the kitchen window and saw dad pulling weeds from the roses before he went into the fields to work.  Later when I got up there was a huge fresh bouquet of roses on the kitchen table.  Mom was sitting right in front of the bouquet sipping her coffee with a most peaceful look on her face. 

My mom planted flowers all the time but dad is the one who kept the weeds away.  I never knew for sure why he called it “Mom’s garden” except that he did all the work in it so she could enjoy it.  I think the garden was a gift from my dad to my mom.  Our house always had roses and other fresh flowers inside as well as outside during the blooming seasons.