By: Blake Davis

“Lord, I thank thee a thousand times for the roses.

Help me to thank thee for the thorns as well.”

- Old Scottish Prayer

It’s Mothers Day, 1957, and Bradley Bridges walks out to his garden in rural South Georgia.

The season is turning, bringing humidity to the air and alligators to his pond.

An austere Southern gentleman, the kind who carries himself with a respectable demeanor, speaks little, and will spend the last 60 years of his life leading a Sunday school class, where if a member joins without a pocket knife, he will issue them one.

He is followed by his three young daughters, dressed in their nicest Sunday dresses. The oldest is eleven, nearly 30 years before she would become my mother.

The three daughters line up behind their father as he leads them to a red rose bush, where he selects a rose for their mother, and each daughter waits in turn to select the perfect red rose -it must be red- to let their father pin it to their dress lapel.

They then search to find the perfect white rose -it must be white- to pin on their grandmother.

They climb into their wide finned, unairconditioned seafoam green station wagon and drive to church, where every member wears either a red or a white rose. The garden colors are all it takes for the whole community to express celebration, joy, memory, and loss.

I’ve Never Been a Rose Guy

I never got the hype about the ‘ouch flower’. From other gardeners, I mostly heard roses discussed alongside diseases like Rose Rosette, with sentences like “They were beautiful until the plague destroyed all my years of work.” No thanks.

Also I grew up crawling through the forests in middle Tennessee and developed a dislike for thorns.

Two years ago I found some heavily discounted (very underwatered) rose bushes at a big blue hardware store, and simply because I have an inability to turn down a plant bargain, I explained to my wife that “I had to save them” as “they were being mistreated and starved and were due for the dumpster behind the store!”

I put them in my yard without much expectation (and an eye-roll from my wife), now able to add roses to my addiction collection.

But that summer on vacation sitting in a rocking chair beside my mother, we talked about gardens, and she shared traditions she remembered growing up in the south.

Like the common belief that Buckeye seeds were lucky- her grandfather never left the house without one in his pocket.

She shared the memory of her sisters lining up with her to let her father pin roses on their dresses.

That walking into church on mothers day she could immediately tell from everyone in the community who was celebrating their mother in life by a red rose, alongside those who wore white roses to honor the memory of their mother who passed on.

I was touched and inspired by this image.

But I’ve never been a Rose guy.

So the following spring, when the day finally came, and I cut the first blooms off my scraggly bargain rose bushes, they were sad looking, petals half dropped, but I pinned them to the lapels of my children anyway and excitedly left for church, with a droopy yellow rose to give to my mother because I didn’t have any white.

I noticed that no one at our large church wore roses, and no one seemed to notice the remaining bits of drooping petals hanging limply from my children's clothes.

By the time I got the light yellow rose to my mom it was wilting and half squished by children's hands.

I was passively hoping for roses rather than stewarding and growing them.

Leaning In

My children never met my father or my grandparents, and my mother had already moved to Tennessee when I was born, so I never witnessed my grandfather cut roses in his garden.

So, despite the questionable success last year in my attempt to restore this tradition, it did show me an opportunity for what could be.

I spent days researching and lamenting over different rose types, wanting something white or light pink I could pin to my mother this year.

And having built a new arbor at the entrance to our large Magnolia (the ‘Totoro Tree’), I wanted a climber.

I chose the New Dawn rose. Pink, but light enough to pass for white, it was introduced in 1930 (fun fact: the very first plant to be patented in the United States) and is a Hall of Fame Rose in the World Federation of Rose Societies.

I had to order from a specialty rose website (the shipping was almost as much as the young plant!) and I’ve been thrilled with how well it has already taken off!

It even allowed for some successfully propagated cuttings in its first fall!

Eager for a more successful attempt, I began to study.

This year I fertilized the bargain bin roses and New Dawn at Easter. I pruned them all for the first time (learning how by writing this article)

… and in doing so also discovered the importance of pruning gloves…

And the third week of April, all my roses bloomed at once, prolifically. But two weeks earlier than I needed. 

In this, I discovered through research that if I cut all the buds back to the first five-leafed stem, and give a little added fertilizer and regular watering, I can guide the roses to create fresh blooms within 10-15 days, just in time for Mother’s Day Sunday morning.

From the gardener's perspective, this tradition shifted my knowledge from ‘never been a rose guy’ passively hoping for outcomes, to learning enough about pruning, fertilization and deadheading to tend the timing of their blooms to equip my family for a meaningful connection with our community at just the right time.

The New Dawn

This year I will walk outside into my garden to breathe in my favorite air– the Tennessee spring.

I will be followed by my three young children, dressed in their nicest Sunday outfits.

My oldest is five, right at the age where he’s asking questions about my father and his great grandparents.

The three children will follow me to one of my bargain bin red rose bushes, which this year has been thriving with blooms. I will select one for me, for my wife, and the children will wait as patiently as their little wiggly bodies can to select the perfect red roses -they must be red- for me to pin to their lapels.

Then my mother, now 80, will follow us to the New Dawn rose -now taller than me- where we will select the perfect bloom to pin on her as she tells my kids the story of her father, and her grandparents in South Georgia.

We will climb into our minivan and head to church.

And while this year we may still be the only family there with red and white blooms: As my mother shared this tradition with me, and I share it with you, maybe next year I’ll see more red and white blooms, and then you can join us as together we celebrate the mothers still with us, and comfort those wearing the symbol of their absence, inviting our community into these garden traditions.

Because the best kinds of traditions are those that connect us to the history and lives of our ancestors, while also inviting our broader community into blooms of life and the thorns of loss. Both of which I am thankful for.

So I’m beginning to ‘get’ it with the roses. It’s just a flower, until it isn’t.