Confessions of a Bee

Mornings at the International Rose Test Garden

I have a confession, and my phone's storage will back me up: I have taken somewhere north of 100,000 photographs of roses. Not roses, plural, as in "several roses I have known." Roses as in an ongoing, obsessive, borderline-scandalous love affair with acres of the blossoms, blossom by blossom, sunrise by sunrise.

It is just a short jaunt for me to the International Rose Test Garden, which is either the best or the worst thing that ever happened to my photo library, depending on who's asking. My husband asks. Often.

It does not stay in the background of your life. It insists.

Here is what nobody warns you about living near a world-class rose garden: it does not stay in the background of your life. It insists. Acres of roses, lovingly tended by people who clearly take roses as seriously as I do, unfurl in every color a rose has ever dared to be — deep, velvet reds that look like they're keeping a secret, whites so pale they seem to glow from the inside, corals and apricots and a pink that I am convinced does not exist anywhere else on Earth. Each bush so many blossoms, all at different chapters of the same story — a tight, secretive bud here, a blossom flung fully open there, shameless and gorgeous, nothing held back.

And the light. Can we talk about the light? The morning light in that garden is doing something close to magic. It slides in low and gold, catching the edge of a petal, dropping the rest into soft shadow, and suddenly an ordinary Tuesday rose is the most dramatic thing you've ever seen. I do not regret setting my alarm for this.

Then I go. Camera in hand, my drink going cold in the car, and I go through those rows the way a bee does — with purpose, with focus, utterly unable to pass a good blossom by. The bee is after pollen. I am after the photograph, the one that captures exactly how the light shines, exactly how that rose decided to hold itself that morning. Was it watering day? Are they covered in droplets? Sometimes it takes one shot. Sometimes it takes twelve, because the rose keeps changing its mind about how it wants to be seen, and honestly, don't we all.

The bee is after pollen. I am after the photograph — the one that captures exactly how the light shines, exactly how that rose decided to hold itself that morning.

There is a real joy in it — an early-morning, slightly ridiculous, thoroughly undignified joy, crouching in the dew to get the angle right, apologizing to no one for taking up an entire hour with one very patient bush. I come home with wet knees, muddy shoes, a dead phone battery, roughly 800 new photographs, and a heart full.

That's the real harvest. The photos are just proof.

Because those mornings are where every painting starts. Every petal I study in that garden, every shadow I chase across a bloom, becomes part of the visual language I paint from later — the blush at the edge of a fold, the way red doesn't stay red once the light gets involved. The garden does the growing. I am just trying to keep up.

So, if you ever spot a woman moving through the rows at the International Rose Test Garden at unreasonable o'clock, phone held up like an offering, moving from blossom to blossom like she's got somewhere very important to be — that's me. I promise I'm harmless.

The roses, on the other hand, are wonderfully dangerous. One look and I'm gone for another hour. Or two.

 — Cynthia

Love this? Share it with a fellow rose (or light, or bee) obsessive — and if mornings like these are your kind of thing, come join the Collectors Circle. You'll get early looks at new paintings, behind-the-scenes garden wanderings, and first dibs when new pieces drop.