Fading roses...

I’m not a rose devotee. Somehow there’s something about their lushness that makes me feel that they are a little too showy, a bit too blousy for my tastes.

I don’t really like their perfume either It's too heady and cloying. I prefer the smell of wild mint or sweet peas.

Then of course there are those thorns. I’ve been spiked and torn so many times I should know better by now, but it seems that I never learn and, quite stupidly, keep the gloves off until the blood flows free.

It’s only when they begin to fade that I really warm to them. It’s almost as if as they fall from vigour they take on an ethereal beauty that they didn’t possess in full life. The petals, slowly turning and fracturing with browned paper edges, look softer somehow; more delicate than they were in the fresh high colour of youth.

They seem gentler, their thorns not as wickedly angry and their leaves, which were once such a distraction, superfluous almost as they fall leaving the stem naked and straight. They lose there scent too; not completely but it becomes more bearable as age dilutes, mellows, and turns it into an echo of the miasma it once was.

Anyway, I’ve hung these roses from a string in the cellar to dry. I'm hoping I've caught them before they fall. Who knows, they may retain some of their lilac or they may turn to a gentle grey. Either way - with beauty in such short supply - I think it’s worth trying to preserve some of theirs at least for a while.