The rose pruners at work in their front garden delight me. They also arouse my curiousity. I watch from where I’m sitting in the party park on the other side of Mere View Way, where it meets Jasmine Avenue.

Once I would not have thought to sit like this in the park by myself, but lately it feels comfortable to take time out at the end of my walk. I usually find a bench in the dappled shade of a tree. My current favourite is a Mulberry, although in summer the fruit that drops from the branches would be sure to leave stains on my clothes.

Sometimes I meditate. More often, like today, I observe and pay attention.

The pruners

The rose pruners are sensibly dressed for the prickly job: long sleeved shirts, trousers and big hats. Gardening gloves. I hope someone has told them that if you put a big glob of cream on your hands before you put on the gloves it’s easier to wash away the gardening dirt and stains.

From here, I can’t hear what they say to each other. At first, their animated discussion sounds like an argument. But I soon realise they are chatting animatedly, enjoying being together. They settle into a rhythm of clipping and cutting.

She carefully sets the few last rose blooms to one side. Perhaps she’s planning to put them into a vase, or maybe to give them to her mother.

From time to time they stand back to see what needs to be done next. They admire their own and the other’s handiwork. Now the woman points to the bush he’s working on. Maybe she’s saying she’d take off more of that stem, or perhaps she’d make a more slanted cut.

They throw the cuttings onto a blue tarpaulin on the grass nearby. When they’ have’vs finished, they’ll roll it up so they don’t have to touch the prickly stems again.

Intimate work

I notice their almost-touching heads as the pruners bend towards each other, and the closeness of arms and hands. Do I imagine she brushes his shoulder with her breast?

Pruning roses together can be an intimate, bonding activity. My father, who taught me to prune, used to say that a couple who argued about where to plant a new bush or how to prune the roses had a good marriage,

It’s not like other activities people do, say, parking a caravan in a small space or moving furniture. That’s where real arguments happen. It doesn’t matter who’s the driver or who gives the directions. I sometimes wonder why people continue to holiday in caravans when they know that setting up can be so fraught with unhappiness.

I imagine the pruners watching for new shoots on their lovingly tended bushes. And their delight when the first buds appear in spring, imagining the bushes covered in blooms.

The American poet, and Pullitzer Prize winner, Mary Oliver, in her poem ‘A Summer Day,’ says that paying attention is a kind of prayer. Perhaps she’s right.

***

Acknowlegments

This is another piece written in response to a prompt in an intensive twelve week online writing course with the title, ‘For the Joy and the Sorrow’. You can read other blogs prompted by this course here and here.

Thanks to my friend, Eileen Susan, for her encouragement. Check out her Substack posts here.