Or so Juliet claimed, hoping her lover could be forgiven his name and family history.
Shakespeare's theatre is even called The Rose.


Yet. the history of the rose is a varied and somewhat bloody one, steeped in symbolism and secrets.
(ooooooooh.....)

And it is the flower of the month for June.
The Latin name for the rose, rosa, literally means red. But that does not begin to encompass the complicated, sometimes fickle nature of the rose. Or the fantastic array of colors and multi-colors roses grow in.

"How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.”
 ~Victor Hugo

Quite possibly the most popular flower in the history of the world, the rose has a multitude of legends and myths surrounding it. 

A flower of such prominence must be related to the gods of our world, or at least one would think so~ when considering the wealth of otherworldly associations attached to the blossom. Was the smile of Amor the source of our first rose or did it fall from the hair of the goddess of dawn, Aurora?

The sweet scent and beauty of the blossom resulted in it being popular among the rulers of this world. Cleopatra had her pillows filled with rose petals. Romans used petals to decorate their feasts and even had canopies filled to shower petals upon the guests. Sometimes the Roman’s love of roses became too much and the shower of petals would actually smother guests. Those wacky Romans with their Vomitoriums and guest smothering!

Roses also became a sign of secrecy. The Greeks would plan their battles in the secrecy of a rose bower or sub rosa. As a result, it became customary during the 16th-17th centuries to paint roses on the ceilings of meeting places and council chambers. 

Prostitutes in Nimes were known as roses. But I'll venture they did not smell like them. Clearly a visit to a rose would need to be done in secret. Still is pretty much...

The Teutons believed the rose was a symbol of the underworld and called their battlefields rose gardens.

The Roman love of roses undermined the desirability of the flower for Christians since they associated it with the hedonistic lifestyle of the Romans. However, the flower was too popular to ignore and so the flower was added to the bouquet of flowers that are attributed to the Virgin Mary. The white rose symbolized her joy and the red rose symbolized Mary’s suffering. As a result, the rose became viewed as a paragon of virtue.

If you send a rose to someone, you are sending a message that references timeless attributes and places such as love, joy, beauty, blood, celebration, death, enjoyment of life’s pleasures, secrecy, struggle, enchantment, the underworld, youth and war. 

But mostly love. (sigh.)

I love roses, and we carry only the most exquisite, scented, unusual varieties~~~ and even roses from our own garden and friend's gardens.