The other day, while out in the garden getting ready for winter, I saw all the pretty rose hips on one of my rose shrubs.

And my first thought was, “Do my hips look big?” I always think of that question when I see rose hips.

And then I laugh. I wonder if roses worry about the size of their hips the way people do?

For the record, these hips are on a rose identified for me as ‘Ballerina,’ and the hips are not as big as they appear in this picture. They are tiny compared to some rose hips I’ve seen.

The biggest rose hips I’ve ever seen were in a garden in Canada that I visited as part of the garden tours of the GardenComm conference back in 2013. Ten years ago. Let me see if I can find that picture…

I’m back.

I went looking for a picture of those really big rose hips, but I didn’t find it. I think I took those pictures with my “big camera” rather than my iPhone so who knows where they are now? Stuck on a hard drive on an old computer, no doubt. (Making note to reboot old computers, grab old pics off of them, and then recycle them.)

But I did find a blog post about a play called Autumn that I think is pretty good! I think you’ll find it worthwhile to click on that and read it for yourself.

And I found this picture of a rugosa rose blooming somewhere around Quebec City in August 2013.

I think, but don’t quote me because I’m far from being a rose expert, that rugosa roses produce some of the biggest hips.

I hope now when you see rose hips, you don’t automatically think as I do, “Do my hips look big?”

Actually, I hope you do think of that, and it puts a smile on your face!

Thanks for reading to the end.

(While looking through those old pictures, I found something interesting, but unrelated to rose hips, so look for it on tomorrow’s blog post. No hints! Okay, one hint. V-i-o-l-a.)