fairies and roses in the garden

Walking through the rose garden and harvesting flowers for the kitchen is an exercise in ecstasy.   The fairies one sees in the rose garden are no less beautiful and no less sirenic than the mythical green fairy of absinthe benders gone past.

One rose, one color, one scent.  And then a second.  And then A third.  

And then Somehwere along the way—the fifth rose?  The ninth rose?  The dozenth?  The point of true takeoff is hard to triangulate—but somewhere along the way you find yourself spinning drunk, intoxicated by the heavy tones, suffocating in pleasure.  Suffocating with the force of two hands choked around your neck, gripping you with total pleasure. 

it’s as if the normal air wave that generally passes through your sinuses and fills your lungs with breath was somehow inflated a thousand times its’ normal density.  The smells are almost too thick to pass through, but somehow it manages.  Once through the noseway it expands through to the back of your head, filling your head, and consuming your entire sensory experience.  It smells so strong you can hear, feel, and taste it. 

We were hoisted off the ground by two shimmering fairies each, dangling from our shirt’s shoulders like laundry on the line—gently inches off the ground--and we were carried in a twirl and a spin from rose to rose to rose to rose to rose.

Bumping into one rose we noticed it contained at least fifteen raindrops sitting in its lilac colored womb from the rain storm ten days prior.  Sun distilled rose water, sitting in its mother’s womb.  And so we did what anyone would do in such a place-- we crawled on the ground and drank milk from the mother rose like infants.  A true highlight. 

After Harvesting several hundred roses, making way for new blooms to come, she took the harvest inside to distill into a rose water hydrosol.  Sunshine and roses, on demand, and in bottle.  blessings be counted.  

“THE WILD ROSE” – BY WENDELL BERRY

Sometimes, hidden from me in daily custom and in ritual 
I live by you unaware, as if by the beating of my heart.  

Suddenly you flare again in my sight

A wild rose at the edge of the thicket where yesterday there was only
 shade

And I am blessed and choose again,
 That which I chose before.