When I moved into my house there was a scrubby looking rose growing in a very shady corner of the house. It was spindly and close to the foundation. I thought, it must be a wild rose; it's planted in the wrong spot to be anything else. I proceeded to pull it up and throw it in the compost pile. It started to grow in the compost pile- which was also in the shade. I had my husband bring it to the community compost pile to get rid of it. There, mission accomplished.
Until next year, it came back up in the original spot. Damn! So I pulled it out again. But the next year it came back, AGAIN! So I dug it out. There! That ought to do it, I thought.
But the following year it came back again. Just long enough to bloom. It was a beautiful, petite flower that had a strong sweet rosey scent. Just beautiful! I tried to do everything at this point to save it, but it was too late.
Not too long after it's demise, an older woman who had help take care of the house when the second owners had lived here approached me to tell me how beautiful the gardens were coming along. She told me how the woman who had lived in the house had LOVED to garden and would be so happy that I had moved in and done all the things that she had never gotten around to doing.
I thanked her. She then went on to tell me of this rose that the woman had planted. "It was the most beautiful rose! It was a climbing rose and at one time had covered this back portion of the house." She motions to the area that the "wild" rose had been growing.
My heart sank and I thought- Ugh! Did I really do that? I really felt like an idiot. And just so you can understand what an idiot I really was, here is a picture of the mysterious rose in all it's glory (once again, got the picture from the web since the rose is now dead- the picture is actually from heirloomroses.com where I will be promptly ordering a replacement).
ZÉPHIRINE DROUHIN You know, I laugh. That rose was so hard to kill and I never stopped to consider just letting it grow since it was so determined. I wonder if the spirit of that woman had been protecting it. If so, she must have been quite a woman, because I swear that rose gave me the finger with it's last glorious bloom right before it died.
3 comments:
Oh my what sad story but isn't amazing how tough some plants are. Last summer I dug down to the roots of this wild rose bush and pout Round-up in there, however it did not kill the bush in fact it acted like plant food and the rose bush grew bigger.
I'm doing a Happy Dance cuz my Zephirine Drouhin that I thought was dead is putting out lotsa leaves!
A friend once dug up what she thought was an ugly rose, and threw the debris over her back fence onto a hillside.
It grew- and later became a selling point when she put her house on the market!
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