Rosa Rugosa

We ripped a good portion of the wild rose hedge out when we first moved in, much to the dismay of this house’s former owner. The Rosa rugosa had hugged the inside curve of the driveway before arcing around the back of the garden wall in a tangle of thorns and flowers, separating a cultivated perennial bed from the wilder field beyond. But we were transforming part of that front field to mown grass, the better to hold the venue tent for our upcoming wedding.

We spent countless hours that spring and summer reconfiguring the garden, and anytime we got within a foot of the slate wall we’d find roots from the rugosa, looking to spread if we’d only let it. Thirteen years later it seems to have settled in to the space we’ve allowed it – a wide swath remaining along that bend of the driveway, stretching for about 30 yards before stopping to leave room for the lawnmower to pass between its thorny branches and the garden wall.

From the side window of my childhood bedroom, I could look out at other roses: a mostly tidy jumble of antique rose bushes at the edge of the yard. In my mind, they are a mix of bright and more subdued hues and smell heavenly – like summer embodied: sweet, hot, ephemeral.

The roses in our yard now are not so refined, but just as lovely. The wide hedge is its own little wilderness, and within its realm are all sorts of wonders.

In Fall, the leaves of the Rosa rugosa are the last to drop. Long after the bright maple and yellow birch leaves have sifted to the ground, when even the tamaracks have dropped their needles, the rose hedge’s rusty leaves finally drift downward.

The naked brambles reveal birds’ nests tucked deep within. Through spring and summer and into fall, the birds maneuver deftly through the twiggy branches, disappearing within to build nests of sticks and grass – or, sometimes, just to take shelter – wisely beyond the reach of potential predators.

Even now, as we wait for the rose hedge to rebound from the weight of winter snow piled onto it for many long, cold weeks – before the green leaves unfurl, before the time for laying eggs – the birds take shelter there, darting within the still-brown brambles when a car comes past or a dog runs near or children yell to each other in the yard, a bit too close for the birds’ comfort.

They flit from bare lilac branches to rose hedge to serviceberry tree and highbush cranberry. The chickadees, year-round residents here, have shifted to their spring song now. Goldfinches – waiting, like the leaves and flowers, to show their summer colors – call “potato-chip, potato-chip” as they fly about. Song sparrows alight on different perches, their bright melody seeming to welcome spring, even on mornings when the temperature dips below freezing.

Soon, we will begin peering beneath the garden-side edge of the rugosa hedge, looking for the curled over spathes of Jack-in-the-pulpit. Several of the quirky plants poke up through the sheltered soil there each late spring, first just pointy leaves reaching skyward, then growing tall and taller and curving protectively over the spadix.

As summer bursts into color – a thought that seems distant with the memory of snow still so fresh – the rugosa’s swath of green leaves becomes peppered with yellow-centered pink blossoms, their scent permeating the yard and floating up to bedroom windows. A couple of wild raspberry canes mingle with the rose thorns, their juicy berries worth the scratches it takes to reach them.

Bees, earlier fed by the apple blossoms of the old orchard out back and a multitude of flowers growing wild through the yard and fields, buzz from rose bloom to rose bloom. The bees – and late summer butterflies – come to the rugosa even after its flowers have faded, to feast on the asters whose tall stalks twine up through the hedge. The bees cling tiredly, during these last warm days, to the asters’ fringed purple blooms as summer declines into chilly nights and shorter days.

But all that is in the seasonal distance. Spring has been late in coming this year, April serving up a slow thaw and lingering show showers. May, on the horizon, offers hope of greening leaves and a landscape slowly changing, from the tired brown left by winter’s cold and melted snow to colors, subtle at first, gradually blossoming into a spectrum of hues.

In the hottest, brightest days, the Rosa rugosa, with its labyrinth of flora and fauna within and around it, will bloom bright pink and divinely scented. Fleeting as summer, yes, but a sweet something to look forward to during the still whispering days of spring. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the April 27, 2018 issue of the Littleton Record.