'Mister Lincoln' roses from my garden. I cut them in the middle of a cloudburst, because I realized their heads were in the dirt. They're now filling my dining room with their fragrance. Roses bloom from the last week of March all the way through till November here, and I have two bushes that bloom year-round.


The idiom “Take time to smell the roses” has quite a bit of truth in it. When I take the time to bury my nose in the velvety petals of the roses I bring in, my chaotic/stressful/busy/harried/overwhelming day tends to quiet down and I end up going back to whatever job I was doing with a new sense of clarity.