Random Thursday: The Desk Rose

[hrj]

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!

Comments

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

If you've not heard much recent filk you might be surprised. People like Brenda Sutton, Heather Dale, Erica Neely do songs which fall some way outside what might have been called the filk norm. We're a lot more grown-up these days.

And I would love to read, or to hear, the rest of that song.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

You have always been worthy to be given roses.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I'd always heard that roses were very finicky requiring a lot of attention to flourish (maybe this is true in WI), and then we moved to Amsterdam where roses grow in glorious uncared for tangles -- there was a park near our office that had fantastic trellises that as far as I could tell never got any care at all. So it made me wonder if it wasn't that roses were inherently tricky, but maybe certain kinds, or in certain places.

Our new place has a rose bush, and I certainly get the impression it's one that flourishes on its own -- there has been rather little care taken of the back garden and it's a bit of a jungle. I don't quite know where to start other than "cut back enough of the tree so that you can get out the back gate without getting clocked on the head with an errant branch". I suppose I'll have to learn the proper pruning schedule for a rose bush, and see what I can do to detangle it from the clematis (which we thought was just a weed vine until it started blooming in September!)

[katerit.livejournal.com]

Roses are and have become an important symbol in my family - and are a family. I love roses and have always wanted to have some planted - though I am not a gardener.

I love that chorus and would also love to know the rest of the piece.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I'll try to remember to dig up the full lyrics.

My filk experience was that, while people paid lip service to appreciating my more "literary" songs, people rarely wanted to sing anything but Black Widows and Welsh History. I was told explicitly on a number of occasions that my songs were "too hard".

For a while there my standard response to anyone who wanted to record Black Widows was that I'd only license it if they agreed to record some other one of my songs (and *not* Welsh History) too. A few people agreed but I don't recall that any of them carried through. Finally I just stopped giving permission for BWitP at all. I'd rather my musical career be forgotten entirely than that I be remembered primarily for that.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

We had a damask and a moschata rose at the previous place. Never having grown roses before, I didn't know about the need to prune. The moschata grew and grew (getting named Audrey III) without blooming, but with ever-more vicious thorns. When it was taller than I was and thorned me in the forehead one day, I got mad and hacked it back to smallness just so it wouldn't attack me again.

The next year we got lots of roses, of course.

[zeborah]

I've got a number of rose bushes in various states, but one has been named the Ambitious Rosebush, its ambition being to take over the world. It puts forth these giant shoots metres tall, covered in the vilest thorns and prickles, and then you prune it all back and turn around and there's another one.

So two years ago I got annoyed at it and pruned it mightily. And discovered that there was a meek little lemon tree hiding behind it.

Last year I got annoyed and pruned it even more mightily. And discovered that there was asparagus cowering underneath it.

This year I pruned it back to ground level because lemons and asparagus. But Ambitious Rosebush is ambitious, so every week or so (it being spring) I have to go out and take off all the new buds.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

One of the roses at my Oakland house combined gorgeous red-black single roses with enormous, long, heavily-thorned canes that would have made great assault weapons. I kept thinking about how useful that variety would be if you wanted to grow a living fence by intertwining canes from multiple bushes.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Let's see if this formats up correctly (although obviously it's only chords, not tune). Note: the "you" in the lyrics is not specific, more an abstract concept.

* * *

G Em B7
Minutes to hours to days whirling past
E Am
The moment won't last, so we snatch at the sun
Am C
We schedule five minutes for smelling a rose
G B7
Other claims on our nose have us off at a run
E E7 Am
But no bloom ever grew but a hand set it there,
D D7 G E
Nor yet throve without care and a gardener's eye,
E7 Am
And I've spent the bright days taking time to plant roses.

Down the long driveway the briars entwine,
Lilac and vine and the lilies reach high,
Neighbors and butterflies savor the day
Only you stay away
Now that summer is high,
I have tried to be patient with dirt in my hands
But I don't understand; when I look I can't see
When you knocked on my door was I out planting roses?

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

Here on the coast, where the weather is mild,
The poppies grow wild on the hills in the spring,
But summer is barren and angry and dry,
And the flowers will cry for the rain winter brings,
But with care they will bloom through the heat and the cold,
Though the year may grow old and the stormy wind blow,
When you knock on my door, there'll be plenty of roses.

(instrumental bridge)

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

[hrj.livejournal.com]

OK, so all the chord spacing disappeared entirely. *sigh*

[hrj.livejournal.com]

See in above comment thread.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

That is absolutely beautiful, and I love the internal rhymes. I'm guessing from the metre it's in a threeish rhythm, 3/4 or 6/8.

It makes me sad to think how many wonderful songs (actual and potential) we lost when we lost you.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Thanks, internal rhyme is a specialty of mine. :)

The time is a a sort of slow waltz tempo.

There's a pretty large body of work of mine out there that most people haven't heard yet, so it's the functional equivalent of still producing.

And you can always read my fiction!

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

That makes me feel rather less worried about doing something wrong with ours, which seems to have been doing QUITE well on its own!

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I shall. :)

[abd07.livejournal.com]

Giving you flowers has always seemed to me kind of like bringing flowers to Newcastle, if you see what I mean, but I'd love to if you would like that!

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, I see what you mean! It's not the thing itself. It's the idea of the thing. And it's not about what other people do, it's about my relationship with myself.