a rose by any other name...

is a noxious weed.

we bought our house in fall and there wasn't much to the yard. there was a little evidence of a peony under a window and some staghorn sumac near the front corner of the yard. and there was a runty, scraggly rose bush stub under one of the living room windows.

i love roses. not those things men buy when they feel guilty. that sort of rose symbolizes all that is ugly about human interaction in my own humble opinion. it suggests a lack of creativity. if my own true sweetie came home on valentine's day with an armful of store roses, i would begin divorce proceedings. so when i say roses i mean those crazy, rambling, rickety looking small flowers that live on fat bushes in the yards of grandmothers. my own grandmother and her mother had them. if you picked them and brought them in the house half of them would shatter on the way in and the other half would wither within a few days. in the meantime, they'd fill your house with a smell you couldn't possibly deserve.

so that's what i was hoping for. old roses. i didn't hold out all that much hope. the bush had been in the path of the construction/remodeling/painting folks and i imagined they'd had all sorts of chemicals dumped on them. but when the snow started to melt and the stalk started to green up, i went out and stared and the bare, thorny stubs. i wasn't sure what to do but figured looking at them regularly would at least tip me off to any excitement that might be coming along. a few weeks into my staring, a kindly neighbor suggested i snip the branches back just before the place they start to brown. i did. and i continued to look at the greening stubs regularly. once the freezing stopped happening nights the green stubs started to grow and leaf out. as the buds formed, the aphids arrived. i panicked. a few years ago a lime tree i started from seed (yes, i did!) succumbed to a horrible infestation we'd battled two seasons. when i pulled the dead trunk and shriveled roots out of the pot it felt like i was burying a run-over pet. so when i saw those little stems covered with hundreds of vampire aphids, i did what anyone would do in the circumstances. i had a fit. having a fit rarely solves your problem, but it gives you time for someone more rational to come up with a solution and present it to you.

the other half is generally more rational and he brought some sort of aphid killing spray. he is waging all-out war against weeds in the yard and is a master of destructive chemicals. every weekend we'd drive up to the house and i'd expect to see the whole bush lying flat in the yard, it's weak limbs stretched out in supplication, one limb clutching wherever the heart of a rosebush would be. at the same time, i'd expect to see the whole thing ablaze with blooms, sagging under the weight of them like the ancient ramblers in my grandma's back yard. i began to take things far too seriously. i worried they'd be yellow or purple the way some pregnant women worry their kid will be born with horrible birth defects. i dreamed they were white. i dreamed they were red.

about the time of the great aphid assault, we noticed a few smaller bushes scattered around the yard. two or three were nestled in among the tiger lilies. one snaked up the split rail fence around a tree. so many roses was almost more than i could bear, an excitement that tightens the chest. and then a few weeks ago they all started blooming. the big bush i'd tended had fat reddish pink buds that opened into roses that looked almost like button mums, billions of petals per rose, complete with a smell that comes right out of childhood. the other bushes, the ones scattered around the yard, were less bushy and more viny. and they were covered with the most awesome, delicate five petaled white flowers ever. these roses have a smell distinct from the red ones, softer, more fruity. it's a smell that travels a greater distance. you can smell them before you can even see them. i love them. i love the red ones and the white ones. along with the lily of the valley, peonies, tiger lilies and apple tree, i feel like we've got a complete old lady garden that any grandma would envy. i am satisfied. i feel very, very good about our yard and our flowers and feel like taking credit for what really just happened on its own.

the other half loves the fishing and talked me into joining him on a short expedition to the east branch of the delaware river, a mile or so from the house. the walk to the river is through about quarter mile of chest high undergrowth shaded by tall, close pines. a huge part of the undergrowth includes massive clumps of brambly white roses just like my own at home. while the other half fished i sat on the bank content to knit and breathe in the scent of roses. they were everywhere. they draped off stone bluffs. they oozed out off mud banks. they climbed twenty or thirty feet up the trunks of the massive pines. a friend asked me if they were the sleeping beauty kind. they are. thick. impenetrable. fantastic.

later at home i emailed photos to the parents so i could ask questions. my dad said the white ones were multiflora. no, i insisted. they're species roses. the origin of all roses. venerable and perfect and precious. he was adamant. he'd learned it in 4-h. i'm not joking. he remembered this small flower from something that happened more than fifty years ago. i insisted he was wrong. look it up, he challenged.

and that's when everything changed. because multiflora roses are evil. heartbreakingly evil. they came from asia quite some time ago and were used in the thirties as hedgerows because they were dense enough to keep livestock in. dense enough for sleeping beauty's castle. they are invasive. they spread and destroy any native plant in their way. at this point i decided i could still love them. love them the way you love a headstrong child who might have set a few fires. you tell yourself that your love will make the thing- child, rose, whatever- better. good. worth saving. i would keep mine there in the yard where they wouldn't be able to strangle any poor, helpless native species. i would still be able to love them and they'd be beautiful and people would see how beautiful they could be with the right person to love them and rein them in.

but no. because birds love these roses. well, who wouldn't? but the birds snap up the seeds and then drop them out later with their own fertilizer. they do this all over the place. so my own precious roses, roses that want to be good, don't have any choice in the matter. those horrible birds spread the rose seeds all over creation. now, i know what you're saying. what should i care? how is it my problem if my neighbors have to dig up an unwanted rose bush once in a while? well, my favorite neighbor is actually catskills park and i can't, in good conscience, let my roses go down the street to wild forest and drape their vampire selves all over that beautiful place.

my sweet little bramble roses are considered a noxious weed by the state of new york. you can look them up and most of the websites focus on how to destroy them. hundreds of sites all talking about the war we are waging against this soft scented menace. i have to kill them. the red ones can stay and for that i am grateful, but those delicate white ones have to be killed. i figure this season they are already blooming and there's nothing i can do about it except look at how pretty they are. but in the fall i will have to chop them back. the other half will offer to do it for me. the process will take six attempts, according to most websites. six seasons of killing roses. and although i will be grateful that the other half wants to help, i will do it myself. and when i teach of mice and men next year, i will tell my children about how hard it is to do what the rest of the world thinks is right.