Because it's the peak of Romance Week, can you share an interesting fact about roses that you learned while researching your book, Elements of a Home?

Amy Azzarito The rose is the only flower that I included in Elements of a Rome because its scent and image, as well as the bloom, were so pervasive throughout history. One of my favorite stories is of the banquet that Cleopatra organized to impress Marc Antony. She had a banquet hall filled with roses that were two feet deep! Can you imagine how many roses it would take to get to the point where you were wading through two feet of petals petals? For context: to create a rose aisle runner for wedding, you'd need 120 cups of roses for a 3'x5' aisle (there's actually a website for brides to calculate how many rose petals they need!).

Cleopatra knew her audience - Romans loved roses. They were thrown at parades, wore garlands in the hair and dined while lounging on a bed of petals! I included more fun stories about roses in the book -- and Cleopatra makes quite a few appearances as well!

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