Monday Musings: Cracker Rose

This is my baby, my darling, the Louis Phillipe Rose, better known by its local term, the Cracker rose. My baby is known as an ‘easy care’ plant, and if you have one yourself, you know why; it doesn’t require any type of spray, and it is resistant to most of the plant related diseases found in Florida. Really, all you have to do is plant it and watch it grow.

I remember my parents coming home with these two little rose bushes. They planted them in some nice soil out of a bag, mixed with cow dung and some kind of fertilizer, and in the several years we’ve had it, all that’s been done is some pruning. So…the perfect plant for me, who would probably kill anything more high maintenance than that within a week.

It really is a darling plant. I took more of an interest in it last summer and now I’m in love with it. I pick its blossoms to dry and bag to use for rosewater and for certain recipes that call for petals. I take the leaves because I’m sure I can do something with them. This harvesting occurs nearly every week. I arm myself with an old bag and my scissors and head out to the bushes, scratching myself up over a half hour period just to get at those sweet smelling buds and to trim away the dead parts of the plants. Those are peaceful periods, when all I have to focus on are the roses, the thorns scraping and pricking my flesh, and dodging the bumble bees and hornets that seem to fly close simply because it amuses them to watch me freak out.

I don’t know what I’ll do when I move out. Maybe my parents will let me take a bush with me.