We are on our way to the Heirloom Rose Gardens today. They've enticed me with the promise of free roses. The email I received yesterday promised each visitor this weekend a free New Dawn climbing rose and a free miniature rose.

The Rose Gardens are soul-nourishing. From the parking lot, visitors enter a fragrant maze of climbing roses that eventually opens out onto a perfect lawn with artful borders and beds of shrub roses. Each one has it's own distinct and personal perfume. Rose and I have to smell them all. We like to leisurely stroll from plant to plant comparing fragrances. The boys prefer to play leapfrog and race down the well-kept lawn.

Across the street is a cottage-type garden, where the roses are allowed to ramble. Next is the miniature rose garden where perfectly dignified little plants in raised beds invite vistors down a garden path to the greenhouses where only true varieties, not grafted roses, are sold.

With Todd along, this promises to be a perfect day. Rose and I will be able to stop and smell the roses, while Todd and the boys...do whatever they do.