Carraig Rose. 🌺

This is what we dream about all through the winter gloom. The good and golden season when the roses are in bloom. When ramblers cover fence and wall and bushes in the bed - glow in lovely tones of yellow, white and pink and red. (Patience Strong)

My Mom’s Dad planted this beautiful rose bush in the 1940’s when my My Dad and Mom were first married and still, to this day it’s exquisite aroma more magnificent than all the perfumes in Brown Thomas. Our Dad pruned it every Good Friday. So much sublime theology packed into that. 

All through our school years, Mom made sure we children took roses to school on the 1st June, it being the month dedicated the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. I always say that the only thing Jesus didn’t do in our home was borrow our clothes. As for us children, we borrowed and swapped what clothes we possessed, all of the time, fragments and small opportunities were all made use of. Jesus, our elder brother, valuable member of our close knit family back then and still is today, nothing has changed. 

Every time Mom cleaned our solid fuel range cooker, she would put the soot on the rose leaves as a greenfly repellant. Our tea leaves 🫖 too were used to nourish her ‘Carraig Rose’, named after the place of her birth - ‘Carraigramhar’. We were Eco-friendly long before ‘the experts’ arrived on the scene. Beautiful June. Beautiful memories.