I don’t know her all that well, but Diane and I got to talking about gardening after the Women’s Group meeting. She told me about a wild rose growing alongside a road near my old neighborhood. With our town’s rich history of farming, it’s easy to imagine the rose having been planted in a farmhouse garden and perhaps well over 100 years ago. The empty land it now grows on borders a housing plan. (Such is the way with much of the old farmland.)
"I pulled over a few years back and took a cutting,” Diane said while pulling up a picture on her phone of the now thriving climbing rose in her backyard. I knew right then where I was headed on my way home, and it didn’t take me long to find it. Thrilled at the sight of perky pink petals swimming in a deep green sea of weeds, I made plans to read up on rooting rose cuttings and go back.
This morning, I filled a mason jar with water and crouched on the side of that road, snipping a few of the thorny stems and gently pulling them free from the shady tangle they wove through. Now this little jar of joy and hope sits in my kitchen. I’ll plant the cuttings after lunch and wait with great anticipation! Google tells me I’ll know in about 14 days if my efforts were successful.
The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
