Lo, How A Rose E're Blooming

Today is balmy, and queer, in the way the slant of the winter sunshine combines with a warm breeze to make it feel like a pleasant Spring day, in December.

But on December first, the mercury dipped below freezing, and there was skim ice on the puddles. As I was making my morning walk through downtown, I passed the sign advertising the Holiday Festival this weekend at First Methodist Church, across from Union Park, then I glanced over my shoulder at a Southwest facing wall of the stone church where a rose bush had pushed out new blossoms on this first day of the last month of the year.

The blossoms were particularly vibrant against the gray wall, and the bare branches which surrounded them. As I continued my walk, I notice other flowering plants - primroses, chrysanthemums, marigolds - which seemed to be defying the season.

After some thought I was worried that this late-in-the-year effort would harm the Springtime and Summertime showing of these flowers.

"The Spring and Summer were so dark, wet and crummy this year, that these flowers are probably just trying to get some blossoming in," Marci Martin told me. She's the chief rosarian, or rose expert, and horticulturalist at Hartford's Elizabeth Park, which is famous for its rose gardens. She's also president of the Connecticut Rose Society.

"I've been growing roses for thirty years," Martin said. "And this is the first time I've seen anything like this."

Martin was about to head out to her own garden to cut back the roses for the winter.

"It's about to get cold, and the ground will freeze, so it's time to do the fall cut-back," she explained. "You don't have to be so careful as you are in the springtime when you're cutting for shape and blossoms."

"This blooming won't harm the rose bushes, or the other perennials," she said. "If they set buds in August, they'll want to bloom first chance. And they'll bloom again next Spring and Summer. To be honest, I've been hoping for a snowstorm so I could get a photo of the roses in the snow for our calendar."

Martin recommends cutting hybrid tea rose and floribunda rose bushes back to knee height, and covering the roots with some kind of mulch for protection. Shrub roses can be cut back as well, but only about a third of the growth needs to be trimmed.

"Rose bushes can be devastated by ice storms, which we have plenty of," she warned. "So it's important that the bushes are trimmed back so they can handle them."

Martin, herself, seemed to be amazed by this late Autumn show of blossom.

"I've seen forsythia and bell flowers," she said.

She encouraged me to enjoy the rare display, and not to worry too much about nature, which, she explained, does pretty well taking care of itself.

For those of us searching for a symbol of the season, the brilliant flowers are not a bad start.

From the 15th Century German carol, Es Ist Ros Entsprungen - Lo How A Rose E're Blooming:

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as men of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.