When  was a little girl, it was the custom to wear a rose to church on Mother’s Day.  Some things were just givens — everyone went to church on Sundays and the roses were always blooming in May.  Sometimes mothers received fancy corsages to wear, but most often both men and women just pinned on a garden rose to honor their mothers.  A white rose was worn to honor a deceased mother, and a red rose for a mother you could still sit next to in church.  I have a  special memory of my paternal grandmother who had been raised by a second mother after her birth mother had died in a miscarriage when Grandmother was just a little girl.  No one spoke of such things in those days and I was an adult before I asked why she had died.  Grandmother wore two roses, one of each color. Of all my great-grandmothers and grandmothers, her birth mother is the only one I never got to know.  What a lucky little girl I was.

My beautiful white tea rose Honor is blooming today for them all.

I really don’t like red roses, so the only one I have in my garden is a striking floribunda called Cinco De Mayo.   As you can see —  here on Once de Mayo —  it is still not in bloom!

My neighbor’s Mr. Lincoln is showing off though.  How lucky am I still, at seventy-years of-age,  to be looking around my street for a red rose to wear?