Another birthday gift I offer to readers here: the first rose of the season bloomed in our garden today. This is a fragrant old rose we've had since the 1980s, when a sweet elderly neighbor in New Orleans, a Black gentleman named Mouton Bickham, shared a cutting with us. For years, not knowing that the rose is called Louis Philippe, we called it the Mouton Bickham rose. I love seeing it in this hand-painted vase that my favorite aunt cherished.