Lynn Anderson is a country singer and world champion equestrian best known for this 1970s song. The song was a spectacular hit - not just hitting #1 on the Country chart and #3 on the Hot 100 chart, not just scoring a Grammy, but it was the biggest selling recording by a female country artist for 25 years. Billboard magazine named her Artist of the Decade for 1970-1980.
The song reminds us that good and bad are mixed together in life. That we don't get the rose garden without digging, and sometimes the price of the flower is an aching back. That it's worth it.
Rose Garden (Songwriter: Joe South)
I beg your pardon,Image: Hybrid Tea Rose "Lynn Anderson", named in Anderson 's honor by the American Rose Society.
I never promised you a rose garden.
Along with the sunshine,
There's gotta be a little rain sometimes.
When you take, you gotta give, so live and let live,
Or let go.
I beg your pardon,
I never promised you a rose garden.
I could promise you things like big diamond rings,
But you don't find roses growin' on stalks of clover.
So you better think it over.
Well, if sweet-talkin' you could make it come true,
I would give you the world right now on a silver platter,
But what would it matter?
So smile for a while and let's be jolly:
Love shouldn't be so melancholy.
Come along and share the good times while we can.
I beg your pardon,
I never promised you a rose garden.
Along with the sunshine,
There's gotta be a little rain sometimes.
I beg your pardon,
I never promised you a rose garden.
I could sing you a tune or promise you the moon,
But if that's what it takes to hold you,
I'd just as soon let you go, but there's one thing I want you to know.
You better look before you leap, still waters run deep,
And there won't always be someone there to pull you out,
And you know what I'm talkin' about.
So smile for a while and let's be jolly:
Love shouldn't be so melancholy.
Come along and share the good times while we can.
I beg your pardon,
I never promised you a rose garden.
Along with the sunshine,
There's gotta be a little rain sometimes.
All I saw was the first line and the whole song started scrolling through my head. Timely springtime reminder on several levels.
ReplyDeleteThe Hybrid Tea named 'Nancy Reagan' is very nice as well.
ReplyDeleteI'll have this song running through my mind the rest of the day now..... thanks for that :)
ReplyDeleteThanks! I still like the song, despite (or rather because of) the fact that it was used in a great USMC recruiting ad of my youth ... featuring scenes of the very real anguish endured by the boots of that era. I had just matriculated though Parris Island myself, so the whole thing was one big "in joke" for the cognoscenti - and a great example of that oh-so-rare thing; "truth in advertising".
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