Random Thursday: The Desk Rose

And it’s not that I’ve minded the thorns, .
I was born rather prickly myself. .
But there’s a place.
on the shelf by the phone.
where a vase would go nicely, .
And my garden has roses to share.

(refrain of a song that I wrote too late in my songwriting career for it to have gotten much play – also: very much not the sort of song that would have caught on in the filk music community)

Today’s Random Thursday prompt is courtesy of aryanhwy who asked, “Tell us about the desk roses.”

It will take a little while to get to the desk-rose phenomenon.

With a name like “Heather Rose” I could have gone in two directions: embracing the potential for floral iconography or rejecting it entirely. From the title of my blog, you might be able to guess that I went with the former (perhaps a bit out of character, given that I did reject a lot of stuff categorized as “feminine”). When I was a kid and came up with some ghod-awful pseudo-heraldic designs (after reading the Encyclopedia Britannica article on heraldry – this was long before I found the SCA), both heraldic roses and some unidentifiable sprigs of heather featured prominently.

When I finally owned my own home, I started planting rose bushes, focusing on old roses (100+ years old), fragrant roses (my favorites being Double Delight and Bewitched, as well as the fragrant old roses), and single roses (still having a penchant for the heraldic-style rose). I think my Oakland house got up to 20+ different plants by the time I sold it. And given the mild California weather, I always had a bit of fun teasing my cold-weather friends by complaining mid-January that the roses wouldn’t stop blooming long enough for me to do the annual pruning. When I was house-shopping in Concord, one of the pluses of the house I chose was the plethora of rose bushes in the extensive front yard (as well as plenty of space for more). My garden spreadsheet currently lists 34 plants, only about 10 of which I’ve added myself. It wasn’t in any way a deciding factor in choosing that house, but it made the decision feel right.

I don’t really have a green thumb, and a preference for old varieties means that I’m always struggling against rust and black spot and all the other ills that rose is heir to. But for all their reputation for being finicky plants, they’re able to take a surprising amount of abuse and neglect and come up blooming. I tend to confine myself to regular watering, periodic dead-heading, and an annual massive pruning that always feels more drastic than it really is. If not for that annual massive pruning, I probably could have cut roses from my garden year round. It would be tempting to do the pruning on a rolling basis just for that reason, but it’s more likely to get done if I do it in two or three massive sessions.

So about the desk roses…

I’ve gotten in the habit, over the last year or more, of keeping a rose on my desk at work all the time. Always one from my own garden. I cut one on Monday morning and as long as I make a good choice they generally last all the way through Friday. And then I tweet a picture of it, which is also a sneaky way to get in some book promo, because the background includes my computer desktop with rotates between my two book covers. So why do I do desk roses? There are three main reasons.

1. Because I can. It’s that same teasing impulse that leads me to “complain” about finding a slow time to do the pruning. I may occasionally long for actual changing seasons, but I do love my year-round growing weather. The other part of “because I can” is having so many that I can always spare one. It’s the same reason that I’m always happy to cut a rose for a passer-by who asks for one when I’m working in the yard. And the reason why I don’t mind people taking the occasional one unasked. (Though I did admonish one person who was helping herself to half a dozen that I’d prefer that she only take one so that others can enjoy them.)

2. Because I spend such a small proportion of my waking life at home in daylight, that I don’t get to enjoy the roses in situ anywhere near as much as I’d like to. Any time I’m at my desk, the rose is there in view. If it’s a fragrant one, I can enjoy the scent simply by leaning closer. The roses are an always-available stress break.

3. Many many years ago, I decided that I wouldn’t wait for another person to give me roses. (Not a specific “other person”, any person.) I’ve developed several garden-related life philosophies. One can be summed up as “I will plant my garden.” The unpacked meaning of that one is: there are projects/activities that don’t have immediate pay-off, and that you may never be in a position to benefit from, but you need to plant those seeds anyway, because by the time you might get the pay-off it will be too late to start. Another can be summed up as “it’s all very well to stop and smell the roses, but you also need to stop and grow them.” This is somewhat similar to the previous, but more along the lines of: that perfect experiential moment doesn’t necessarily happen spontaneously; someone else has been digging and pruning and watering those roses so you can just happen to stop and smell them. And the philosophy that comes out as “never wait for someone else to give you roses” is all about not predicating your own self-worth on the opinions or acknowledgment of others. It’s about asserting that I am worthy of being given roses even if no one else except me gives them to me.

And so…desk rose!