Dear Colin Dickson:

{ Monday, November 26, 2007 }

How old were you when you hybridized your first rose? Did you consider going into anything other than the family business? What dreams did you sacrifice to do this amazing thing? Thank you for Desert Island:



Each new hybrid takes almost ten years, and you have introduced rose after rose, as did your five preceding generations. The dedication is dizzying. More so, that you must carry each silken dream in your head and your heart and on your books for a decade before you can show the result. (It's worth asking oneself: What design am I prepared to nurture for the next ten years?)

Perhaps, with your life spent in roses, you have some insight into why it is that the thousands of combinations of shape and color strike us uniquely. Why is it that a deep red tea rose excites some different note, sets some different string vibrating, than does a pale yellow climber?

How is it that your Tequila Sunrise looks like the happiness when something daring and wonderful has been whispered into the ear of the person who might be one's lover?


Or that your Shine On looks like the happiness of graduation?











How is it that your Dawn Chorus looks like the happiness where you want to sing but no song is big enough, and so you laugh and put your arms around something or someone you love?

Mr. Dickson, thank you for your work. I wish you many more years and that you are always amazed and pleased by the roses of others as much as your own.


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