Roses in November

If you know anything about me, you know that I have a black thumb.  I cannot grow anything.  Instead, I rather have a tendency to kill plants that come within a certain number of feet of me.  Before Gregg and I got married, he had this lovely Christmas cactus.  It didn’t take too long after we were together that that thing bit the dust.  Right now we’re aiming for ground cover outside that I won’t be able to kill just by looking at it.  Anyway, I’m starting to digress.

Before Gregg and I even met, the previous owners of our home planted a very small rosebush in the middle of the front yard.  I don’t know what it looked like back then.  I know that when Gregg bought the house (pre-me) he made attempts at feeding it and pruning it and what have you.  After we got married?  My theory was “Don’t let me anywhere near it.  It’s blooming and if I touch it I will kill it.”  And that’s how we approach the rosebush now.  Totally hands off.  We let nature take care of it and we enjoy it from the window.

Here’s the thing about my rosebush, though.  It does not bloom consistently.  When it blooms, we normally get between one and four blooms at a time.  You never know if it will be pink or red.  Or both.  One day this summer I woke up to a whole bush full of pink blooms – the most I had ever seen.  (More about that later.)

The morning we told our adoption agency we wanted to be Pooh and Tigger’s mom and dad, four beautiful pink roses came into full bloom on our rosebush.  It was amazing.  It was also late September, and I had never seen this rosebush bloom so late in the year.

The afternoon I got a phone call from Pooh and Tigger’s mama telling me ICAB had signed off on the paperwork allowing their adoption to proceed, the whole rosebush was alive with beautiful pink roses. 

Last month, in the middle of October, I was waiting for something good to happen.  There was a red bud waiting to open.  And it never did.  It looked like it died of frost right on the stem – and in the depressed mood I was in, it was one of the saddest things to look at. 

But this morning I came back from paying a utility bill at city hall, and I noticed that the outer layer of frost had peeled away from that rose, and the rose was actually going to be in bloom.  And what do you know?  Pooh and Tigger are meeting their mommy and daddy for the first time today.  I guess sometimes you need to peel away the crap to see the beauty lying under the surface.  Oh, and what do you know.  The rose?  It’s pink.