It owes its roots to showing vegetables. One hundred years later, it is the event that has come to define Thomasville and give it its moniker of the Rose City.

The 100th Rose Show gets underway Friday, and the festival that accompanies it begins Thursday. We didn’t get to have a 99th Rose Show last year, another celebration quelled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’re still in the throes of the pandemic. Many of our residents have gotten at least one dose of a vaccine. Quite a number of people here have gotten both and are fully vaccinated. We salute them for getting their arms ready and helping curb the pandemic’s spread.

Our community likely will be welcoming scores of visitors for the first time in more than a year. It will be hard to keep an appropriate social distance but hope those who are here will try to do their best — and of course, wear a mask.

At the center of it all is the Rose Show and that it has endured 100 years is a tribute to its founders and those who keep it going through the generations. There is so much more than the Rose Show to take in, from the Orchids on Parade to the Standard Flower Show to the Civic Garden Club Flower Show.

The Ritz Amphitheater will be home to the Civic Garden Club Flower Show and the Rose Fest Marketplace. The annual Show and Shine Car Truck Show returns and there will be events for children to get their hands dirty — in a good way.

It’s not just downtown getting involved, either. Pebble Hill Plantation, the Lapham-Patterson House and the Thomasville Center for the Arts are all a part of the festivities, as are several other locales.

The festival gets started Thursday night with the Thomasville Police Department’s inspection in the streets on Broad Street.

For a number of reasons, the 100th Rose Show has been a long-awaited event. We hope this landmark occasion lives up to the anticipation, for all, and we pray it all transpires safely.