Nightlighters Dance: "Rose Ball" 6/9/2012 (Page Three)

Did You Know? - When a man presents his sweetheart with the gift of a dozen roses, he hardly expects her to make them into a salad or a sauce!  Yet flowers in general, and roses in particular, have always played an important role as a luxury food throughout Europe and the Middle and Far East.  The use of roses in cuisine has a long history.  The Chinese were probably the first to popularize the rose as food.  Travelers’ tales recount how in Nanking, the capitol of China during the Middle Ages, there was an intensive rose-growing industry to produce petals to be used to flavor tea and pastries, as well as a liqueur called "sand of roses".

Did You Know? - The rose is an ancient symbol of festivals and the commemoration of historic events.  Every year on June 24, representatives of one of the oldest religious foundations in London offer the Lord Mayor a red rose on a cushion in payment of a tax originally owed by a certain Robert Knollys.  He was ordered to pay this tax ad vitam eternam (for all eternity) in the fourteenth century for the crime of having created a passage between two houses that he owned on either side of Seething Lane, without council.  At the other end of Europe, the Catalans celebrate Saint George’s Day, April 23, by giving each other a rose and a book.

Did You Know? - About 60% of the roses grown in the U.S. are produced in California.

Did You Know? - In 2004, two dutch companies, River Flowers and F.J. Zandbergen, experimented and successfully grew a rose that had its petals rainbow colored. As petals get their nourishment through stem, the idea is to split the stem into several channels and dip each one in a different colored water. This way all the colors will be drawn by the stem into petals and resultant rose will have all the colors in it. The same method can be applied to other flowers especially to Chrysanthemum and Hydrangea . You can use the same idea to color any flower, anyway you like.

Did You Know? - Following are types of roses and how to use them.

Hedges – A hedge is a solid row of rose bushes planted to form a natural barrier. The natural barrier may provide privacy between neighbors or as a way to reduce traffic noise. Depending on the type of hedge bush you buy, the height will be between three and six feet tall. Birds also love to live in hedges because it provides them protection against the elements and predators who don’t like thorns.

Bushes – Rose bushes are purchased and planted individually or in clusters in a landscape or garden. You can purchase bushes in single colors or one color, miniature or regular. Bushes can be used in your garden or you can cut the flowers and bring in to your house. Roses will attract bees and butterflies to your yard to help the pollination process for your entire garden.

Miniatures – There are different types of miniature roses even. Some are so tiny, they are planted in a pot and kept indoors. The blossoms are small, being an inch or two in size and in shades of pinks and reds. Other miniatures reach 18 inches to 30 inches tall and are planted outside. The roses are much smaller than a standard rose is and come in almost any color.

Climbing Vines – Roses that are made to climb trellises and arbors have many more blossoms than a bush. The branches are more flexible, and they wind around or can be tied to the trellis so they grow straight up. Vines can reach heights to the second story or even higher!

Did You Know? - The 1984 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Los Angeles, California, United States in 1984. When Tehran, the only other interested city on the international level, declined to bid due to the concurrent Iranian political and social changes the IOC awarded Los Angeles the Games by default.

Quotation To Remember: Earth laughs in flowers.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Hamatreya"

Quotation To Remember: People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. ~Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat

Quotation To Remember: Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.  ~Heinrich Heine, The Hartz Journey

Quotation To Remember: When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a rose with the other.  ~Chinese Proverb

Quotation To Remember: The flower is the poetry of reproduction.  It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.  ~Jean Giraudoux

Quotation To Remember: As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.

Quotation To Remember: At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experience of life; the thorns should never be plucked from his roses