A Rose is Not a Rose

All roses are not created equally.  I recently received two beautiful yellow roses from lovely lady friends, and they were given in an honest expression of friendship.  Nevertheless I can’t help but compare these stiff, unemotional, perfect flowers with the rambunctious, bossy roses that live in my garden.

 

Granted the grand rose I call my Tree Rose is a very old lady, and she was here before I came.  I can’t shake the feeling that she is forever bedeviling me just because I thought she was a goner when I arrived here, and I almost relegated her to the Township compost dump.  After all, her motley thorned bones were a mix of grey and brown scabs, and not an inkling of life was showing.

Luckily for her, my husband insisted we give her a try, although I’m convinced he was afraid of her thorns and preferred ME to handle her than him!  To make a long story short, I stuck her unceremoniously into the garden in a sunny spot and regularly watered this thorny stick.  To my utmost surprise, she started an amazingly strong shoot, and to this day has never turned back.

However there is no befriending this grumpy old lady.  She insists I don’t touch her stalks or she will poke me, so that when I have to cut down her spent blooms I need to balance on one foot to reach, and only my pruners may touch her.  I’m sure she chuckles as I wobble, reaching for her tall peaks.  She waits for the day I fall into her prickly embrace, from which she wouldn’t release me until someone rescued me.  I’d be screaming, getting more stuck with every move.  What she doesn’t seem to realize is that most of her limbs would need to be cut to free me!! 

There was a time recently that I forgot myself and grabbed her stalk for balance.  She instantly stabbed my finger right through my garden glove!  I ended up at the doctor with that one.  Her thorn was so strong and hooked I thought I’d been poisoned so I got a tetanus shot just in case.  My finger was very sore for a couple of weeks!   And it was my middle right finger! 

Ah well, I must live with my guilt, and she does reward

us with wafting perfume and giant blooms.  Here is a picture of her.  She looks quite innocent and regal doesn’t she?  Well don’t let her fool you.  A rose is not a rose is not a rose!

Pictures of the Tree Rose flowers and its gnarly old stem!