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Life on my own #50: Roses in springtime

I've come to appreciate a bouquet of roses.

For the longest time, I was like, roses? They're pretty and all, but so are lots of other things like clean floors I don't have to sweep dead rose petals from.

And thorns are poiky. (That's pronounced like boy-key. It's a technical term meaning "owwwww I pierced my thumb.")

But I was shopping for groceries the day before Easter, feeling mighty fine. Spring had sprung and I'd just finished a morning full of yard work. A purple hyacinth had magically appeared in my shopping cart, 50 percent off. A few minutes after I picked up that pot, I passed the display of bouquets and noticed a small but pristine bunch of roses for just $4.

Why not? I asked myself.

I've been given a single rose just once or twice, and got a bouquet no more than that. There were rarely any flowers inside my house growing up - my mom is allergic to pretty much everything. I simply had no idea what a bouquet sitting on the dining room table would be like.

So on the spur of the moment, I bought myself a beautiful, perhaps small bouquet of deep red velvety roses.

It was an adventure. I had to figure out how to carry them without hurting them. Would they get crushed in the shopping cart? In my grocery bag in the car? What if the movements of my driving knocked the jug of milk onto them?

Somehow I found an appropriately sized vase for them in my cupboards. I actually read the directions (!) on the plastic wrapper to find out how to care for my new experiment. I looked suspiciously at the little packet of "flower food" and decided to set it aside.

Then the flowers remained perched on a windowsill or on my dining room table for several days.

Gradually, I would notice a faint, pleasant scent every time I came home from work. Instead of the putrid smell sometimes coming from the dirty dishes in the sink, I sensed the aroma of a well-tended garden, the fragrance of a blossoming flower.

It was better than any diffuser. It's what I want my home to smell like every single day.

Comments

Abby said…
apparently your blog hates my phone, I tried to comment but it didn't save...

Anyway, stylistically this seemed like your editorial, are you taking lessons from yourself?? :-D

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