Dee @ Red Dirt Ramblings recently sent me the perfect rose: it doesn’t require any water or fertilizer. I don’t have to worry about black spot or mildew or the flowers balling in Austin’s humid heat. I never have to contemplate spraying poison on it, or be wake up one morning to find that it has been eaten by caterpillars, beetles, or covered with aphids. I don’t have to dread rose dieback.
This perfect rose is a barite rose and it is the state rock of Oklahoma. Dee wrote how moved she was by Tom Spencer’s talk on gathered stones during Spring Fling. Our gardens become reliquaries for those objects (stones, shells, bones, and figures) which have personal meaning to us.
My little pot of everblooming barite roses will always remind me of meeting Dee and all the other wonderful garden bloggers who came to the first Spring Fling.
