🌹 After the Bloom: Lessons in Roses, Tea, and Muddy Boots

 Lee & Lillian’s Garden Notes

This morning, in boots and rain gear, my daughter and I wandered out to our dear neighbor’s roses hedge despite the downpour. The petals were soaked and slightly heavy, the air smelled like wet green things, and the garden felt hushed.

We were outside to play in puddles, but took a detour to gather rose hips — the small, hard seedpods left behind when the bloom fades. It's not the season to gather them for tea. They're dried and winter bitten right now. But that doesn't matter when you're three.

My daughter asked me why we weren’t picking the flowers. I told her that we needed permission from our neighbor first, but that he wouldn’t mind us taking the hips. I explained that people make tea from rose hips. She’s very into “brewing” her own teas and soups from edible treasures we gather on walks. So I explained that the best part for tea it comes from what’s left after the bloom. When the flowering is done. When the plant has begun to rest.

We talked about the proper season for gathering rose hips (after the first frost is best), and how sometimes the most nourishing parts of a plant don’t come in its most photogenic moment.

There’s something about gathering what remains that feels familiar to me. Like selling vintage. Like mothering. Like healing. I used to believe beauty had to come in full bloom — that it had to be fresh, new, unflawed. But slowly, gently, I’m learning to love what lingers. What’s been softened by time. What carries memory in its shape.

The dresses I offer in my shop aren’t perfect, and neither am I. But they hold something essential. Like a rose hip — small, unassuming, and quietly potent.

Just after we finished, she ran off to make mud pies. Her rain boots splashed, her hands caked in the same soil that fed the roots of those flowers. The lesson didn’t end with a tidy conclusion — it ended with play. With dirt. With joy.

And that, too, felt like part of the story.

Later, we placed our handful of rose hips by the window in her "workspace," where she makes her own teas and uses ingredients she gathers to make"stirfry" for the cats (who remain dubious about trying anything that isn't a cat treat or stolen silicone straw). Perhaps when the proper season comes we will gather rose hips again and make tea from them. Or maybe not.

Perhaps the moment was simply about honoring what remains when you discover it.

💫 At Lee & Lillian’s, we believe in honoring what lingers — the dresses, the moments, and the memories that deserve a second bloom.

🛒 [Browse the current vintage collection here → https://leeandlillians.etsy.com/]