View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

June. The month when the roses are at their peak. They are really the only perennials I know that have the ability to bloom all summer. Oh, they require so much care. They must have enough water and enough sun. They must be mulched and weeded. I use cocoa mulch, I like the texture and the smell. I also like that it turns into soil. The mulch, of course, helps control weeds, but it is also supposed to help the roses when it rains, so that the leaves don’t get too muddy. Because roses, at least mine, also get diseases easily. They get tiny spots on their leaves or the leaves turn yellow and fall off. In the fall, I often end up with a garden full of rose canes; not pretty. So I spray and fertilize and weed and deadhead and fuss. And then, I put up an electric fence to protect them against deer. Rosebuds are their favorite. And if I am diligent and industrious, my rose garden will bloom until frost. But I do have other things to do, so this does not happen often!

We live in an old farmhouse. Some of the shrubs and perennials surrounding our farmstead are old. And the beauty of these perennials is also that they require no care. They just grow and bloom for a week or so and then fade away. They don’t get diseases. The deer do not like to eat them and they are strong and robust and sometimes even outmaneuver the weeds.

And then, there is the yellow rosebush. It has always been there right next to our little white shed. We do not know exactly when the shed was built, but we think, sometime in the 1870s because that was when our farmstead was first settled. We have pictures from around that time and the little white shed is in the picture together with the small house which was the original house on our property. This house was later torn down and then some of the materials were used on the square white house where we now live and which was built in 1922.

The rosebush is located right next to the little white shed. Nobody remembers it not being there. These roses do not require care. They are never watered. I never fertilize them or spray them with disease prevention spray. I sometimes cut the branches down in the spring so that I can paint the little white shed or so I can control the rosebush’s growth. But it comes back immediately with vigor and it has spread and I have taken small parts of it and transplanted to the yard at our lake property. But there, it died. Maybe it needs to be against the little white shed to thrive.

The yellow roses have the most sweet and heavenly smell. I sometimes will snip a few roses and take them inside where they will only last a few hours. We think that the little white shed was used to house hired help on the farm in the summer. There is graffiti on the wall, some of which is dated to the 1880s and -90s. And there is a ladder on the wall, which might have led to a loft where the hired help maybe slept. And I imagine them with the windows open, sleeping in the soft June night with the wind rustling the branches of the rosebush outside and, on the wind, the fragrance of the roses wafting through the window.

The farmhands probably worked hard and didn’t have the conveniences we take for granted these days, but they would sleep heavily, tired from a long day’s work and they would smile in their sleep as the soft smell of roses reached them and made their dreams sweet and peaceful.