Rose Resilience

You may not know that June is National Rose Month. I didn't know it either, until my friend Pam told me. 

I'm writing about it because we have ONE rose in front of our house (in the Upper Midwest). When we moved here it looked kind of sickly, and we didn't think it had much of a chance.

Somehow or other, it bloomed though, and we were really happy to see it. The photo at left shows the last rose we had (in September). It looks a little faded because it was starting to get cold--but the rose hung on until the end of the month.

I keep meaning to wrap the rose over the winter, but didn't last year, and again, it looked like it was in pretty tough shape and I wasn't sure it would last in May. But the leaves filled in and I am looking forward to seeing flowers this year, too.

What's interesting about this is that there was a single rose outside the garden at our old house, too. It bloomed for the first few years we were there, and then stopped blooming, but the leaves always came back.

Before THAT, some friends sent me a rose bush when my son was born, and it kept going for a few seasons. I don't know what happened to it because I left that home when my son's dad and I were divorced.

What all this makes me think of is: resilience. Because you have to be a tough rose to survive a winter up here. I promise to wrap our latest rose in October, but I have a feeling it would likely survive anyway. We think of roses as delicate, but the opposite is true.

Today I'm trying to learn from that rose, because I am feeling vulnerable to everything going on in the world around me.

So I'm thanking our rose for the lesson in resilience, and thankful National Roses Month reminded me of it.

To learn more about roses and National Month, go here.