I'd forgotten there were roses...

Another picture from my garden - this time, the climbing red roses that are growing behind and above a decorative willow hourglass I bought this spring. Last summer while prying an endless and ugly mulberry vine from the hopeless tangle it had made in the past few years, I uncovered one - yes, one - red rose. I remembered I had roses in my garden - not many, maybe two or three or four each year, maybe five - but they (and my memory of them) had been lost under the jungly foliage. I remember unwinding the vine from the rose canes, seeing the one red rose near the top of the cane, which rose almost vertically in the middle of the border. It was like a metaphor for my life - prying the yucky stuff, the unneeded baggage and memories, from the bright colors of my life.

On my Internet search later that day, I learned why I had only ever seen a few roses from that bush. You get more blossoms from climbing roses when the canes are horizontal. So last summer and this spring I began to train the canes along the wooden fence, tying them where they needed it. And now - a veritable bower of roses! At least a hundred buds this spring, and now that many blooms.

I have a lot more to learn, though - there are a lot of yellow leaves on my roses, spotted with black. It may be blackspot, and I'm back on the Internet now, learning how to get rid of it, or at least prevent it. And these particular roses - probably hybrid teas - are very fragile - they bloom in a kind of floppy way, and look as if a strong wind would disperse the petals everywhere.

But right now, as I look out my studio window, they're still there after a hearty rain, tumbling over the fence. Like me, kind of - seeming fragile sometimes, but bouncing back and withstanding whatever 'weather' there is. Most of the time I see the roses through the slim trunks of the crape myrtle, but today I celebrate them as they are in this photograph - carefree and healthy (well, except for the leaves), spilling randomly over the fence, framing the willow hourglass like an upside-down smile.