Lyrics: There’s a long, long trail a-winding/ Into the land of my dreams/ Where the nightingales are singing/ And a white moon beams . . .
The roses are pruned, a truck bed of cuttings along with a yard of weeds has been removed, the soil turned over, and a big decision made. I received a cosmic message that I needed to let go of the roses. I can’t care for them by myself and I can’t depend on others to come to my rescue. Oh, I will keep the border of red shrub roses (Knock Outs) out front and a few of my favorites. No easy task as they’re all my favorites but it’s time to down size. After days of even interrupted pruning, my wrists and back were screaming at me to stop; enough already. In their place, I might see about putting in a raised bed to grow a small garden of herbs. lettuce, and cucumbers to go with the bounty of tomatoes I had last summer. Oh, and some nasturtiums. Plants that basically take care of themselves.
It feels as though I’m entering a new passage with this decision to let go of the Rose Man’s roses. In our younger years, each new passage was usually about acquisition; a new home, a new baby, a new job, new friends. In our elder years it’s more about letting go. One of the tenants of Buddhism is to not become too attached to — well, anything. Even our babies grow up and leave home.
In this time of climate change it will be necessary for all of us to cut back on our conditioning to buy and accumulate. I think of my two grandchildren, one in the university and the other getting ready to graduate from high school and go on to university. I would advise them to prepare for the time to come, not this time. Life as we know it today can’t sustain itself unless people change; change from a material focus to an inner spiritual focus to fill those empty places. “. . . modern climate change will be marked as a phase in geological evolution, but also, as a turning point in human consciousness.” (Alastair McIntosh, Hell and High Water, 2008.)
The yard looks bare now but come June it will erupt into a Technicolor vision worthy of the Master Gardener. I will take photos of each rose and map the yard so that in the Spring when the roses are dormant and ready to be transplanted, there will be a record of how they look in full bloom and where they are located in the yard. And I will give them away.
Lyrics: Old remembrances are thronging/ Thro’ my memory/ Till it seems the world is full of dreams/ Just to call you back to me. (Written in 1915 by Stoddard King and Alonzo Elliott and popular with the Doughboys during WWI.)
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