Rosy Finds

"Truths and roses have thorns about them."

Henry David Thorough

This week's finds is about roses. I love roses, both as a flower and as a decorative element. I even like the name Rose (Hi Rose!). Here are some really nice rosey things, as well as a bit of info on taking care of cut roses when you get them:

This felt Roses Pillow from Pier one is only $40, which is kind of impressive for a decorative pillow. Those things are crazy 'spensive.

Felt and roses seem to go together, as this more mod take on the rose makes a great pin. $15 from Fiber Alley, and it comes in other colors too.

This asymmetrical necklace by Maria Elena Jewelry is $37 and has a nice subtle Victorian quality.

$30 for a box of these rose lights from Wrapables. Very pretty way to get some mood lighting.

Another necklace, this one a bit more modern, from Peaches4Me at Etsy

The people who make wallpaper have pretty much cornered the market on using the rose. Plenty of bad wallpaper features giant cabbage-like roses. I like Graham and Brown's take on the more mod version, the macintosh rose, $60 for a roll of wallpaper.

Real Roses

I don't have a yard, so I can't say much about maintaining a rose garden, though I do know about keeping cut roses alive. Generally, you can expect almost two weeks of life from roses, if you've gotten fresh ones.

Keeping them alive for as long as possible is all about how you transfer them to the vase. The best way is to submerge the stems in a bucket of warm water (you can add the preservative that comes with most flowers to the bucket). Remove the lower leaves (the ones low enough to get stuck in the vase), and fill a vase with tepid water.

While the roses are in the bucket, cut the bottoms of the stems under water. This is important because roses are like drinking straws, and will start to suck up water in a couple of seconds. If you don't cut them under water, the stems will suck up air and it causes a bit of a block in the stem, which makes them die faster. Once you've cut those stems under water, shake 'em a bit and transfer them to your vase. You shouldn't have to change the water for about 5 days, but after that, freshen up the vase more frequently.

Some Trivial, and thus Interesting, Information about Roses

Most roses you get from the florist don't have a pungent rose smell. That's because the more pungent roses tended to die faster, so it has largely been bred out of the roses used for sale!

The rose is the national flower of both the United States and England (way to be original, founders)

A red rose held in a hand is often used as a socialist symbol used by many socialist labor parties around the globe.

The Victorians codified the colors of roses and used them as a form of communication. Floriography, as it's called, set forth the following rules:

Red roses = passionate romantic love/true love
Pink roses = lesser passionate romantic love/grace
White roses= virtue or chastity
Yellow roses= friendship, devotion, platonic love, but also jealousy (wtf Victorians?)
Lavender roses= love at first sight

There are so many variations of the rose that it is the most complex flower in the western world. Since there are so many (over 30,000), there are two main categories: Old Roses, grown in Europe before the 1800s, and Modern roses, those grown after.

The oldest fossilized imprint of a rose was found in Colorado, and dated to be about 35 million years old.