I really had no time to gather roses this morning, but I kept thinking about time's winged chariot, the rain clouds massing over the Olympics and the obligation to honor the rose when it is in season. So, I hurriedly clipped some of my beauties, and one bush nailed me good with a thorn....probably in protest...and I brought them in for an informal arrangement. Most of the time I don't go for Ikebana....I feel like I should get in a more contemplative state for that. Besides, I do like LOTS. It makes me feel wealthy.
I don't put insecticide or chemical fertilizer on my roses ( they were my Dad's roses before I brought them over from the Palouse)....just bone meal, alfalfa meal and an occasional dose of fish emulsion. It never fails....the roses throw up their hands (buds) and shriek "Allelulia!, (or maybe "Not again!!!) and produce these spectacular excessive expressions of RoseHood.
This year has been a season of wonderful and awful roses....mainly because the weather veered from the 90's to drippy 50's....but because of the hard winter there have been few aphids. There have been a lot of earwigs, however, and their vile little bodies slither out of all my arrangements.
The little clay men at the bottom are from my ex husband, who is an Ikebana Master.
They make me think of a poem by Yeats called "Lapis Lazuli" where at the end, some old Chinese men play music together and "their glittering eyes are gay"
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