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EVERYTHING IS COMING UP ROSES!


The San Francisco Rose

Yesterday was positively Proustian.  Sitting in the corner of the living room bay window in the late afternoon, sipping a cup of rose tea, its fragrance like Proust’s Madeleine, I had a remembrance of things past:  the story of the San Francisco Rose.

The Iceberg Climber
I know exactly when my love affair with roses began.  We had just signed a contract to buy a singularly unattractive fixer-upper Victorian in San Francisco. The only thing nice about that house was a rose bush in the postage-stamp front garden.  The rose was well established in its bed but was barely winning a turf war with the ubiquitous upstart calla lilies that were closing in.  The rose caught my attention.

The San Francisco Rose and the Iceberg Climber
After the broker left with our offer, I cut an open blossom from the bush and brought it home to Oakland.  The rose sat in a small glass vase on the white dining room table.  Directly above was a pendant lamp made of three equal-sized glass disks, each 24 inches or so in diameter, sandwiched together one on top of the other, and which held in place three cone-shaped halogen fixtures, the insides of which were painted blue violet.  It was gorgeous and we called it the Flying Saucer.  (I regret that I have no photo of this lamp, nor can I find it on the Internet.)  The halogens cast three searchlight beams that dramatically illuminated the deep red velvety petals of the rose before me. 

Souvenir de la Malmaison
I bent forward to, as they say, smell the roses.  I was overcome by the scent.  It wasn’t like anything I’d ever experienced before.  It was heady, overpowering, a lemon bomb, and yes, intoxicating.  I can still see that rose in that vase under that Flying Saucer lamp to this day, 28 years later. Through its mysterious flower language, the rose talked me down from my panic over having just bought a real dump.  It gently persuaded me to reconsider our choice in a different light, think things through more clearly, take a moment, chill out.  I did.  I decided it was all good.  I recalled the three cardinal rules of any real estate transaction:  Location, location, location.  And this bastardized Victorian, which would require a small fortune and years to restore, had a very good location.  The neighborhood was rock solid.  So solid, that a few years after we moved, Zuckerberg bought at the other end of the street.

Variegata da Bologna
So, we owe the San Francisco Rose a serious debt of gratitude.  And to show our appreciation for the appreciation, before we moved, we dug it up, got export/import papers for it from the USDA, and brought the San Francisco Rose with us to Italy.  It’s been quite happy as an ex-pat transplant there, where it keeps company with an Iceberg climber, a Souvenir de la Malmaison, a Variegata da Bologna, and a Cardinal de Richelieu, all of which you see on this page.  But it’s the San Francisco Rose that takes First Prize in our hearts.  It continues to bloom profusely, having lost none of its powers of fragrant persuasion. 

Bouquet of all of the above, with Cardinal de Richelieu
Keep it real!
Marilyn

Comments

  1. Pat ThomasMarch 3, 2019 at 2:19 AM

    So many reasons to love flowers, right?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnitaMarch 3, 2019 at 5:19 AM

    Love these big, floppy, fragrant roses. I've grown a few and they are addictive. Nice to be reminded.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MarilynMarch 3, 2019 at 4:04 PM

      Yes, they're lovely even as they lose their blooms. I save the petals.

      Delete

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