A mouth-watering rose

I love roses—especially the edible ones.

Just look at the photo of the simple, white, elegant blossom set against its background of deep-green leaves. What a perfect picture it makes on May 15, a stunning spring day here in piedmont Maryland.

Yes, the photo shows a member of the rose family. And, yes, it isn’t a Knockout, at least to the thinking of some.

But I think it will be a knockout some late-July or August morning when I take a bowl out to our garden to begin picking our Triple Crown blackberries. It will be a miracle if the first few huge berries make it from vine to hand to bowl. Many will suffer, and I will enjoy, the alternate route: vine to hand to mouth.

So here’s a cheer for edible roses. I have only five of the thornless Triple Crown variety, but they satisfy our berry needs for a month, and we freeze and bag extras to add excitement to wintertime oatmeal, waffles, or fruit salads.

Henry David Thoreau wrote of “high blackberries” a century and a half ago and described a hillside find as “perfectly fresh, black, and shining, ready to drop, with a spirited juice.” Ah, yes, Hank, I know what you mean, exactly. He continued: “Who will pretend that, plucked and eaten there, they are the same with those offered at the tea table.”

Oh the delight of May blossoms and August berries. The finest restaurant in town has no rival to the Triple Crown blackberries that I will pick and eat in our garden.

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