A Gardeners Forum Forums Members History Forum Life 2006 What to do with really good smellin' rose petals?

lol, figured I'd come here and find lots of discussions on potpourri and all, and instead I find a great thread about skinnin' snakies! Yeeeehah!

Anyway, freeze warning tonight so I was out today gathering up everything I figured wouldn't survive and found the last Mr. Lincoln rose bloom, all blown but I could smell it 20 feet away - mmmmmm mmmmmm gooooood! I pulled all the petals off and stuffed 'em in my chest pocket and they smelled so nice while they were there!

Short of taping them under my nose (and I thought about it), what's the best way of enjoying their fragrance for as long as possible? I have a recipe for making beads of rose petals, but I don't have nearly enough at this point. Seems like I've kept them until they've dried before but they always get sour smelling at some point.

Just wondered if you all had better ideas, or recipes for stuff to make out of them - like would soaking them in glycerin make the glycerin smell good?

I'd think you need to preserve them somehow.... use an oil, soap making base like glycerine, or oil. Maybe google preserve fresh flowers or fixative for flowers...or... uh.
did I help???

BTW
Nice to meet you.

how about rose water to refresh your skin?

Make some potpourri,toss a few in the bathtub:-)

rose HIPS MAKE DELICIOUS TEA OR A TASTY SNACK (iF YOU CLEN THE HAIRY seeds OUT FIRST.) Wait until Fall or Winter when the hips have turned red to pick them.

Wrennie, you did help; I googled and found a lot of info. I need to get out and get some fixative and see if I can preserve what smell is left (still going strong, just put them in a plastic bottle cap and I take a whiff every so often and it's still so good!). Nice to meet you too, I'm bad about making the formal introduction, I just start butting in like I already know everybody. ;-)

Mrs. Bradley, all the rose water recipes I saw required a lot more petals than I have but I will definitely try that next year - thank you for the idea!

chenno, those both sound like good ideas too!

Thornius, as is my bad habit, I picked the hips while I was out there before I researched. I ended up with two that had seeds in them, and both were orangy, not red. One was actually more brown, and the seeds that came out were also more grown and shriveled; I am guessing that was a ruined one. The other one was plumper and actually had some red at the stem area so maybe it was getting ready to ripen, I just hadn't given it time. C'est la vie. At any rate, I opened it up and got several pale seeds. The flesh of it was orange. It was not tasty. lol. Was this because it was not ripe, or because I was supposed to prepare it before eating?

Usually the hips have to be red. I like to pick them in Winter. they have a flavor of oranges mixed with rose blossoms. They are almost 100% Vitamin C.

Dang, well they definitely didn't taste like that tonight. Maybe like orange peel, lol. Oh well, hopefully I will remember for next year, or maybe one of the other roses I didn't have time to molest the other day has some hips on it and I can try it again later this winter.

Thanks, Thornius.

:-)