Coming up rosey

On my kitchen counter sits a Mason jar. In this jar you will currently find the bridal bouquet from a wedding that I recently attended; how I wound up with the bouquet is beyond me. If there is anything at a wedding that I hate more than the unity candle, it is the bouquet toss – at first mention of it, you will find me switching my ring to my left hand and walking toward the bar for another glass of wine, face aloof and firmly unsociable. Nevertheless, last weekend I found myself getting out of my car and walking toward my house at 2am with a gorgeous bunch of flowers in hand. The girl who actually caught the bouquet must have forgotten them in my freshly bumper-stickered vehicle.

Not that I’m complaining. The flowers are quite lovely, actually. Multi-colored roses that could only have been genetically engineered, they are complicated shades of pink, orange, and purple. And when is a girl going to refuse roses? The same day that Ann Coulter joins the Dixie Chicks, that’s when.

But seeing these roses in their contrived existence reminded me of a late-night talk show that I recently caught featuring supermodel Heidi Klum. She told Jay Leno that a botanist in her homeland of Germany had recently designed a rose specifically for her; never mind that she has yet to plant it in her California yard – those pesky border patrol laws keep the Heidi Klum Rose imprisoned in Deutschland.

Eventually curiosity got the best of me, and I looked up the Heidi Klum blossom. I mean, what does a flower patented exclusively for a supermodel look like? It would have to be glorious, magnificent, divine, right? I found that it was small, and purple, and kind of bushy. Apparently, its real selling point is the fragrance, an “overpowering scent” according to some. But really, the best quote regarding the Klum bloom came from the fashionista herself: “I hope all fans of gardening like the Heidi Klum Rose so that it will still bloom when my personal flowering time is over.”

Well, my pretties, when MY “personal flowering time” is over, there will not be an Annie Parsons Petunia to carry on my grand legacy of winsome appeal. My image may not be perfect. I might not inspire men to write sonnets or carve sculptures or paint masterpieces or compose ballads or engineer roses. No, there will never be a Hootenannie blossom to carry on my memory.

But hot damn, will there ever be LEGENDS.