The Naming of Roses by Judy Hallberg

Last October I was eager to put away shovels, trowels, clippers, gardens carts and various pots and trellis and I thought perhaps this was the year I would lose my desire to put my hands in dirt, cut back canes, and become over-protective of tiny 2-leafed sprouts poking through the potting soil.  Then I slid around the Whipple House gardens this morning on my old X-country skis and found myself very interested in what was going on under the snow, would the pear trees produce another super crop, would the roses out-last the June rains, would the Hollyhocks return to either the Bradstreet El or the Housewife's Garden Fence, and maybe, this year, would we discover the names of more antique roses.

I'm working on an article for NE Journal of Antiques, about antique roses, and am stuck on the section I call the naming of roses. For your enjoyment (I hope) I'm sending you today's writing accomplishment (so far) a poem that captures, for me, 6 years' experience attempting to put names to all the roses we have in the garden here. Just as we confidently labeled our Great Maiden's Blush, it seemed to evolve and need a different label. The same could be true of the white spinosissima, some of the cabbage, and even the apothecaries. I could be tempted to give up and call each of them by whatever suits any of us from one year to the next. Perhaps they are conspiring now, under the foot of snow, gleeful at the prospect of trading some stripes, some blush color, some quantity of whorled petals amongst themselves just to keep us guessing.