The Perseverance of Nature & The Nature of Perseverance

While I was in the car going up the driveway a few days ago, I happened to notice a bright spot of red in my yard where there should have been only the green and brown colors of early spring grass, pine needles, and dead leaves. 

A circle of red.  It wasn't a cardinal--I could tell that much by the shape.  Since it was a windy day, I figured that it must be a scrap of paper blown in on a breeze and that it would just as soon be gone again. 

But yesterday it was still there.  My curiosity got the better of me, so I went to see the small red circle.  It was a rose. 

It was a rose where a rose should not have been.  My tenant bought a small red rose bush when she moved into her mobile home on my property but the poor little bush hadn't been planted properly and was never cared for.  She just dug a hole a few inches deep in the hard clay soil and then piled a heap of stones over the top of the roots.  But that rose bush refused to give in, although it stayed spindly, and it offered up several surprise blooms each year.

When my tenant moved out, I asked if she wanted me to dig up the little rose plant so that she could take it with her but, no, she didn't want it.  She preferred to buy something fresh and new, she said, but I could have the rose if I wanted it. 

Well, I intended to rescue that little rose but I simply forgot.   My preference is for orange and yellow roses anyway.   And, in the meanwhile, the man who bought the mobile home dug up the rose bush himself and carried it away when he picked up everything else around the trailer that he wanted (including several other items that were also not his to take).  I said nothing and determined not to think about it.

.....until that little rose reminded me that it was still here; that it meant to stay.  There must been a running root underground or a shoot or even a seed.  I don't know why or how but there's an unexpected little red rose blooming on a single slender stalk in the middle of a field of early spring green-brown grass. 

I found the rocks that my neighbor had put atop the roots scattered nearby, so I restored the ring around the tiny little rose bush to give it a small measure of protection.   It has staying power, and it has earned the honor.

We could learn a lot from little red roses.
Life is good.