Papa Meilan helps you to choose right, Son!

Papa Meilan is a "black-velvety" dark red and known as the world's most fragrant rose.



My father loved his roses and we had a large plot in a suburb established in the 1920's.  There were picturesque gardens with all sorts of trees, shrubs and flowers.

We had roses, even one called Chrysler Imperial, but the almost sacrosanct rose was the Papa Meilan and only my father had the privilege to cut one.  When the one in the vase in the long hallway neared its end, he would wait a few days and then go outside and pick the best one on the rose bush.

This best rose was placed centrally in the home, at an intersection between two hallways.  Their was an imbuia  hall stand and he would establish this beautiful red, almost black rose in the vase, the vase itself inside a brass container he had made.  The rose would then last for about three weeks before another would take its place. Its lingering fragrance would fill the entire large old house.

One day while working in the garden, my father turned to me and said: "Son, pick the best, pick one at a time. A good rose's fragrance fills a house. You only pick another a little while after the first had died. Do not indulge in picking roses. Indulge in their beauty, look at them, smell them but never desire another while you have one in the house. And that, my son, is your education on choosing a wife."

When I had chosen a wife, she was in this league.