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As roses begin to strut their Technicolor stuff in the federal capital city’s parks and gardens, one is moved to compare the Coalition government to a rose shrub. The Liberals are the beautiful and fragrant flowers and the climate-recalcitrant Nationals are the thorns. But this is not one of my best analogies and I will leave it there. Meanwhile I report that I am haunting the Senate side rose gardens of Old Parliament House these days and have just, this Thursday, learned why rose bushes are so viciously thorny. It is explained in a new, learned, literary piece about roses, The Myriad Meanings of the Rose, that has just popped up in my online Literary Hub. Until now, bogged down as I tend to be in dreary rational, scientific explanations for almost everything (including the stark changes in the climate) one had always imagined that roses had evolved their heavily armed dangerousness as a defence against being gnawed to death by animals. But, no. The explanation is much more excitingly, supernaturally religious than that. It’s a Christian explanation, too, which is always a bonus. It gets a bewitching mention in Rebecca Solnit’s Literary Hub piece, an excerpt from her new book Orwell’s Roses. On to that one, true, authoritatively Christian explanation in just a moment. But first to another picturesque, more-fun-than-science explanation of roses’ weaponisation. “In the Native American Chippewa culture,” I have just learned online from the Lamour et Fleurs garden blog “the belief in the reason for roses having their thorns comes in the form of interesting folklore passed down orally for generations”. “Centuries past, the Chippewa tribes believe that roses had no thorns, but rabbits and other predators would eat up an entire rosebush at a time, and they were wreaking destruction on the bushes. The roses met together, and they decided to seek counsel with a powerful medicine man known as Nanahboozoo. “Nanahboozoo had magical powers, and he felt angry at what the rabbits had done to the rose bushes that he planted. When the roses came to Nanahboozoo, he decided to arm the rose with thorns across its body to ensure that animals that might eat this beautiful plant couldn’t do so.” Tempted as I am to believe in this lovely legend and while being respectful of the Chippewa people’s colourful beliefs, my Christian background (which I share with my Prime Minister) inclines me to accept the explanation mentioned by Rebecca Solnit. She notes that medieval theologians taught that there were beautiful roses in the Garden of Eden and that they were harmlessly, attractively smooth and approachable until Adam and Eve, sinning, fell from grace and were driven from the Garden. Yes, St. Ambrose explains, I learn from a breathless Roman Catholic blog, “only after the fall of man did the rose take on its thorns to remind man of the sins he had committed and his fall from grace” [while] its fragrance and beauty continued to remind man of the splendour of Paradise”. The OPH rose gardens, spectacularly Garden of Edenesque at the moment, will never seem quite the same after learning this. They have become Biblical. Why does this supernatural hypothesis suddenly have such appeal? Perhaps it is a coincidence of Canberra’s roses being so currently, flamboyantly in flower with a kind of SEF or scientific-explanations fatigue born of months of constant battling with deniers of the science of COVID-19 vaccination and of global warming. In this Australia (and with this science-sceptical Coalition government) it can be hard work being sane, doing reason’s heavy lifting. And speaking of climate change, as I write this the Prime Minister is on his way to Glasgow’s COP26 to unconvincingly pretend (for his acting, like everything about him, is mediocre) that he believes our planet is imperilled. So here is the last in my occasional series of pieces of my travel advice to him (for I know and love the city) of things he really must see and do (slipping away from the boring little conference) while in many-splendored Glasgow. One of the must-see treasures of Glasgow’s fabled Kelvingrove Art Gallery (Scomo will need to take a number 77 bus) is John Lavery’s pulse-quickening painting of the great ballerina Anna Pavlova in whirling, hurtling balletic full flight. No wonder Kelvingrove uses the spellbinding image so much on its merchandise. I went to see the painting two days in succession and was surprised to find Anna still there in her frame on the second day since Lavery, in his genius, has made her look so action-packed that she seems about to hurtle out of her frame and off out of Glasgow across the horizons of Scotland’s western Lowlands. Scomo, though he keeps his passionate love of the arts under wraps (perhaps he fears it would endanger his voter-captivating philistine “Daggy Dad” image and appeal), will love Anna Pavlova and will never forget it. And while on Glasgow, as a Canberran I note with envy that Glasgow is one of the many grown-up cities of the world that has a famous, sentimental song all of its own, an expression of its citizens heartfelt love for it. The song I Belong To Glasgow is old-fashioned and politically incorrect now. But its heart is in the right place and thought of it leaves one wondering if presently stand-offish, aloof, hard-to-love Canberra will ever so endear itself to Canberrans that, misty-eyed and after a couple of drinks on a Saturday, they will sing a love song to it.
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As roses begin to strut their Technicolor stuff in the federal capital city’s parks and gardens, one is moved to compare the Coalition government to a rose shrub. The Liberals are the beautiful and fragrant flowers and the climate-recalcitrant Nationals are the thorns.
But this is not one of my best analogies and I will leave it there. Meanwhile I report that I am haunting the Senate side rose gardens of Old Parliament House these days and have just, this Thursday, learned why rose bushes are so viciously thorny.
Until now, bogged down as I tend to be in dreary rational, scientific explanations for almost everything (including the stark changes in the climate) one had always imagined that roses had evolved their heavily armed dangerousness as a defence against being gnawed to death by animals.
But, no. The explanation is much more excitingly, supernaturally religious than that. It’s a Christian explanation, too, which is always a bonus. It gets a bewitching mention in Rebecca Solnit’s Literary Hub piece, an excerpt from her new book Orwell’s Roses.
On to that one, true, authoritatively Christian explanation in just a moment. But first to another picturesque, more-fun-than-science explanation of roses’ weaponisation.
“In the Native American Chippewa culture,” I have just learned online from the Lamour et Fleurs garden blog “the belief in the reason for roses having their thorns comes in the form of interesting folklore passed down orally for generations”.
“Centuries past, the Chippewa tribes believe that roses had no thorns, but rabbits and other predators would eat up an entire rosebush at a time, and they were wreaking destruction on the bushes. The roses met together, and they decided to seek counsel with a powerful medicine man known as Nanahboozoo.
“Nanahboozoo had magical powers, and he felt angry at what the rabbits had done to the rose bushes that he planted. When the roses came to Nanahboozoo, he decided to arm the rose with thorns across its body to ensure that animals that might eat this beautiful plant couldn’t do so.”
Tempted as I am to believe in this lovely legend and while being respectful of the Chippewa people’s colourful beliefs, my Christian background (which I share with my Prime Minister) inclines me to accept the explanation mentioned by Rebecca Solnit.
She notes that medieval theologians taught that there were beautiful roses in the Garden of Eden and that they were harmlessly, attractively smooth and approachable until Adam and Eve, sinning, fell from grace and were driven from the Garden.
Yes, St. Ambrose explains, I learn from a breathless Roman Catholic blog, “only after the fall of man did the rose take on its thorns to remind man of the sins he had committed and his fall from grace” [while] its fragrance and beauty continued to remind man of the splendour of Paradise”.
The OPH rose gardens, spectacularly Garden of Edenesque at the moment, will never seem quite the same after learning this. They have become Biblical.
Why does this supernatural hypothesis suddenly have such appeal? Perhaps it is a coincidence of Canberra’s roses being so currently, flamboyantly in flower with a kind of SEF or scientific-explanations fatigue born of months of constant battling with deniers of the science of COVID-19 vaccination and of global warming.
In this Australia (and with this science-sceptical Coalition government) it can be hard work being sane, doing reason’s heavy lifting.
And speaking of climate change, as I write this the Prime Minister is on his way to Glasgow’s COP26 to unconvincingly pretend (for his acting, like everything about him, is mediocre) that he believes our planet is imperilled.
So here is the last in my occasional series of pieces of my travel advice to him (for I know and love the city) of things he really must see and do (slipping away from the boring little conference) while in many-splendored Glasgow.
One of the must-see treasures of Glasgow’s fabled Kelvingrove Art Gallery (Scomo will need to take a number 77 bus) is John Lavery’s pulse-quickening painting of the great ballerina Anna Pavlova in whirling, hurtling balletic full flight. No wonder Kelvingrove uses the spellbinding image so much on its merchandise.
I went to see the painting two days in succession and was surprised to find Anna still there in her frame on the second day since Lavery, in his genius, has made her look so action-packed that she seems about to hurtle out of her frame and off out of Glasgow across the horizons of Scotland’s western Lowlands.
Scomo, though he keeps his passionate love of the arts under wraps (perhaps he fears it would endanger his voter-captivating philistine “Daggy Dad” image and appeal), will love Anna Pavlova and will never forget it.
And while on Glasgow, as a Canberran I note with envy that Glasgow is one of the many grown-up cities of the world that has a famous, sentimental song all of its own, an expression of its citizens heartfelt love for it.
The song I Belong To Glasgow is old-fashioned and politically incorrect now. But its heart is in the right place and thought of it leaves one wondering if presently stand-offish, aloof, hard-to-love Canberra will ever so endear itself to Canberrans that, misty-eyed and after a couple of drinks on a Saturday, they will sing a love song to it.
- Ian Warden is a regular columnist.
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