Lookin' Rosy...

So a few months ago, before our June show, we undertook some major remodeling of the landscaping around here...

We cut down and pulled out the roots of over TWENTY giant evergreen shrubs/trees in the center of our driveway alone. Then there were the beds in front of the porch and on the side of the porch and over on the edge of the driveway.... We just cleared it ALL out. And BOY what a difference it made!

There was a BEAUTIFUL Japanese Maple tree hidden behind those evergreens! And OH, you should have SEEN the burn pile!!! God bless our neighbor who came with his tractor and hauled away the tree trunks and branches. He has a chipper! We let him keep the bark chips, too ;0)

There were some lavender plants hidden under those evergreens, and I saved them and replanted them. I discovered a very small rose bush, which had been mowed over and reduced to a tiny stump, and replanted it, too.

And then there was ' Miss Rose'...

She was tall and scraggly, overgrown and untrimmed. She held on to a few leaves, and several rosehips and unbloomed buds from last season remained on her gangly branches. 

She was located at the edge of the gravel driveway... with her roots precariously placed beneath the traffic area in hard-packed gravel.

Now, Deb is no gardener or plant expert.... but I DID work for 18 months at a home & garden store (Molbaks) and learned a bit about plants (taking those horticulture classes was the only way to get a pay increase :0/ )... and I knew that this was not a good setting for a rose. 

She deserved better.

So, I spent one.entire.DAY (an overcast and cool one) gently digging around her roots, loosening the dirt with a spade and small shovel, pulling weeds lodged in and around her roots, lifting inch by inch to dislodge her from the rocky soil. One root stubbornly delved straight DOWN into the earth, and I was unable to pry it out. So we hooked up the truck and a rope, and slowly slowly slowy pulled her out of the ground in the smallest increments possible to avoid damage.

I placed her gently in the new hole I had dug for her, cradled in the corner of the stairs leading up to our front porch. I envisioned her pretty pink blossoms perfuming the breezes wafting into the open windows in summer. I tenderly supported her roots and covered them with rich soil, watered her deeply, and even said a prayer that she would survive the move.

Well........

Despite all that, she dropped all of her leaves, turned hard and brown, and looked for all the world like a dead rosebush sitting next to my pretty white front porch. During our show in June, she did not shine as I had hoped, but drew comments like 'Awwww, that's too bad' from friends and fellow vendors. 

Our weather this summer has been, well, frankly, ABYSMAL. 

People are calling it Junuary, Julyuary, and Augustober.

Cloudy, cool, rainy, and decidedly UN-summerlike. 

But apparently, that is JUST what Miss Rose needed, because about two weeks ago...

She sprouted leaves! And BUDS!

I was sitting on the porch one afternoon, having lunch with Bob, and all of a sudden I realized that there was some GREEN over there by the stair railing. I went over to look, and jumped up and down for joy: 'She's ALIVE!'. 

At that moment, Bob named her the 'Resurrection Rose'... perfect, isn't it?

What had been so downtrodden, and then appeared to be dead, just needed time to recover and be revived. At exactly the right moment, she was. And soon, she will bloom into soft pink old fashioned roses with the most delicate scent... I just know it. She will perfume the air and decorate the porch & yard and be all of the things I had hoped she would be. This photo is of the last blooms that remained on her last fall when we discovered our house...

And no, the irony of that is NOT lost on me... I get it.

Life can be rosy, no matter how dead and lifeless it looks at times.