Maybe about fifteen years ago I had a garden at Leisure World. The old folks don’t typically have space for a garden in the leisure kingdom so they rent out garden plots in a common area. Mary Zupo and I got a plot, she wanted to grow vegetables and me, roses, and it was pretty groovy for a bunch of years.

Our little spot had a gravel walkway and an old-fashioned metal windmill and a small Rubbermaid shed and yard art of all kinds and a bear statue that said Welcome to Our Den. Mary had tomatoes and squash and other vaguely edible things I didn’t care about and I had maybe ten rose plants that were fairly glorious. It was an award-winning garden in that once a year a bunch seventy-year-olds would tour the garden and affix a paper certificate to the wire mesh gates of the worthy gardens. It said something like, Leisure World Award-Winning Gardening Takes Place Here, 2002. Maybe the most meaningful thing I ever won. If you’ve never gardened with your seventy-five-year-old mother-in-law, you should try it.

I met a fascinating group of people in that garden. Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Henry Fonda, Queen Elizabeth, Ladybird Johnson, Barbara Streisand, John Paul II, St. Patrick. Of Course, I met the rose version of these people, but it felt personal. They were all hybrid tea roses, all producing vase-quality flowers. I’d say something nice to them as I passed, maybe a compliment about their acting careers or, in the case of Queen Elizabeth, I’d tell her that I liked her little island and that I was fond of fish & chips. When I entered the garden I’d bless myself when I walked by St. Patrick or John Paul.

One day there was an incident in the garden. Mary’s vegetables weren’t doing so good and, well, my roses were kickin’ ass. Mary was getting up in age and wasn’t going to the garden much. It could be that she wasn’t committed or maybe it was just bunions. Anyway, I suggested one day that maybe we should replace her plants with some more roses. That didn’t go over well. Maybe I could have been a better son-in-law had I taken time to tend her veggies while I did my weekly gardening. Maybe I could have spent less time sucking up to Ingrid Bergman, less time thinking about another paper certificate, but shit, there were seven grocery stores within a hundred yards of the garden and they were all stocked to the rafters with tomatoes and squash so why did we need to grow our own?

Mary didn’t really care that much and after several conversations, we agreed to add five or so new roses and leave the raising of cucumbers to the professionals. Before I planted them, however, Mary wanted to decide where they should be planted. So I bought the roses and took them to the garden and I found a shady spot in the garden where they could rest before planting. But when I did that I said, “Hell, now’s as good a time as any to put them in the ground; I have a pretty good idea where Mary wants them … I’ll get the work over with and she’ll be surprised.”

So that’s what I did. Turns out she was surprised … and pissed. When I returned a couple days later the roses had been pulled out of the ground. To Mary’s way of thinking, I put them in the wrong spot and she owned the garden plot. Her being the leisure in Leisure World she wanted it her way. It seemed like a garden sin to me and I would have thought that, with a saint and a pope in the garden, there would have been some sort of divine intervention. But Mary was right, I had fouled, and so the next day we replanted them according to specification – about six inches to the left of their original position.

♦

We also had a rose in that garden called Mister Lincoln (pictured), named after old Abe when it was hybridized in 1964. It’s a storied, beautiful red rose, leaning toward dark red with a lovely sweet fragrance. Many a rose fancier has had Mister Lincoln in their garden and I still have it in mine. It’s nice to have a true American outside the kitchen window to remind the azaleas and succulents of the sacrifices that have been made so that they can grow in complete freedom. The only thing I lament about Mister Lincoln (the rose) is that when it starts to get warmer outside, the roses on the plant can bud, open and start to drop their leaves all within the span of a few days. Like Honest Abe, alas, the flowers are gone too soon … but the true glory, of roses and of presidents, is that flowers and country will bloom forever if only the garden is tended with righteousness.