She is an avid gardener and an author of many fine articles on old garden roses. Amid the cold of winter, When half spent was the night. T his old Christian hymn, first published in Germany in 1599, is sung to the tune Rosa Mystica and uses a rose-tree as an allegorical symbol.
Subsequent stanzas give further clues.
The crusading knights who brought Rosa damascena from Persia back to France were enraptured by its virtues. They saw in the Damask's recurring bloom a symbol for eternal life, the central tenet of the Christian faith. Now the rose was more meaningful than ever. Since the rose was already exalted and idealized in European life and culture, the idea of a repeat-blooming rose was to make quite an impact. But the Rose of Damascus had already been grown and revered for centuries, and figured prominently in sacred mysteries and rites, healing, and the arts of the Middle East.