Gather Ye Rosesbuds While Ye May

My husband and I were in town for errands. We had lunch out and grocery shopped and used our Giant (an American grocery store chain) gas points to fill up the car and a bunch of cans too with deeply discounted gasoline. (Insert gratuitous Mad Max 2 "fat tank of gasoline" quote here.)  ;-)

As soon as he pulled the car in along the gas pumps, I spotted the roses. They sat there looking like summertime, and there were probably a hundred of them. Some were in decent condition, others not so much. I noticed a flaming red tree behind the roses, and I decided to use that tree to make a colorful bokeh for my shot.

So here is a close-up of one of the pink roses in town - no, not just any rose, but one PERFECT rose - on the day before yet another frost might take them all. I felt so helpless for the roses. There was no way to protect them at all. Soon they would be done and gone. So Eden sank to grief. *sigh* Farewell to sweet summer.

I got back in the car with my camera, as my husband finished up with the gas. "Go ahead and pick a rose for yourself," he urged me. "That thought would never have crossed my mind," I said, quite honestly. "Go ahead," he said; "Nobody's going to arrest you!" Still, I resisted. I am not one to pluck flowers that are not mine.

But he insisted, and in fact would not move the car until I did so. And so it was that I hopped out of the car and ran over to my one perfect rose. I bent the stem, and plucked the bloom, and took it home, and I saved it from the frost.

And I was thinking, the whole time: "No, Dad, I won't forget what you told me about the roses."

My soundtrack song is Pat Benatar and her husband Spyder, with Papa's Roses. It begins shortly before the 10-minute mark on this video. (And aren't they just adorable together!???)

Related poems:
Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay
The Little Prince, his fox, and the rose