Fleeting beauty

roses

The Turks are obsessed with rose gardening, and they’re good at it. A friend told me yesterday that it makes sense they would choose roses because there’s a lot of history there, that roses were first cultivated in the area that is now Turkey. I can’t seem to find anything online that confirms or denies this (though admittedly I didn’t spend much time looking). Can anyone fill us in?

In any case, I went out and took some photos of local roses a couple of days ago (small flickr set here), and it’s a good thing I did it when I did— last night we had the mother of all hail storms. It was the first time in four years of living here that I’d ever experienced hail in this country, and it was pretty violent. The streets were flowing with ice pellets. I’m afraid if I go down and look at the roses today, it’s going to be a sad sight.

Considering it’s almost May, we’re having weather more consistent with early March. After having packed away the duvet and the winter clothes a couple of weeks ago, I had to dig it all back out yesterday so that we wouldn’t freeze, and I had to bring the plants inside to protect them. I’m not particularly a global warming conspirator, but something is certainly going on, whether it be global warming, or a strange series of coincidences, or, from the looks of it, a coming ice age.

6 Comments

  1. Matt
    29 April 2008
    Reply

    Those are some beautiful roses. The weather here has been strange too. Yesturday it was in the 90s (farenheit)and no wind. Today it is windy and in the 70s and it looks like it wants to rain. The weather man says this is so far the coldest year since 1995. Makes me wonder where this global warming is hiding!

  2. Matt
    30 April 2008
    Reply

    Those are some beautiful roses. The weather here has been strange too. Yesturday it was in the 90s (farenheit)and no wind. Today it is windy and in the 70s and it looks like it wants to rain. The weather man says this is so far the coldest year since 1995. Makes me wonder where this global warming is hiding!

  3. 30 April 2008
    Reply

    @Matt: Yeah, I hope it wasn’t 90C – now that *would* be some serious global warming.

    I think the thing with global warming is, it gets warmer over the poles, and that in turn melts ice which makes it wetter and colder for people in many areas. At least, that’s the way I understood it with my brain that can only understand simple concepts.

  4. 30 April 2008
    Reply

    @Matt: Yeah, I hope it wasn’t 90C – now that *would* be some serious global warming.

    I think the thing with global warming is, it gets warmer over the poles, and that in turn melts ice which makes it wetter and colder for people in many areas. At least, that’s the way I understood it with my brain that can only understand simple concepts.

  5. Matt
    30 April 2008
    Reply

    @ Melissa: I remember Waaaaay back when scientists were worried about a new global ice age. That was Waaaaay back in the early 1980s. It is funny how theses things are cyclical.

  6. Matt
    30 April 2008
    Reply

    @ Melissa: I remember Waaaaay back when scientists were worried about a new global ice age. That was Waaaaay back in the early 1980s. It is funny how theses things are cyclical.

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