Each year, my rose bush out the back gives me a single flower worth noticing.
Technically, it produces a few, they tend to be little scrappy things that half bloom, dry out, and fall off like they couldn’t quite be bothered.
But there's always one. Just one that gets my attention.
A perfectly unique rose!
This is my photo and I give myself permission to show it here.
Tighter in its petals than the rest,
Deeper in colour,
With a scent that could stop your heart,
The kind of smell that makes you linger and forget what you came outside for.
The rose this year is particularly dense, it's pedals are tightly packed. I planted that bush on top of my cat. She was hit by a car, years ago now. I buried her near the back fence where she liked to sunbathe, and put in the rose because it felt like the right thing to do.
What’s sweet is the Neighbour’s kids always notice when that one eye catchingly different and worthy rose comes out.
Every year, without fault, one of them spots it, leans over, and clips it right at its prime.
At first, I was a bit taken aback. Like, "hey, that’s my rose".
But then I realised, it's a perfect way to go. Taken at its most beautiful, passed along to someone else with love on their mind and/or in their heart, probably to taken to give to a parent or grandparent.
I never try to control this bush..
I don’t water the bush,
I don’t prune it,
I don’t feed it,
I don’t spray it,
I don’t even look at it half the time.
It just does its thing. Wild. Untended. Unbothered.
And yet, back it comes, that single, uniquely perfect rose.
Isn’t it strange?
How something left to grow on its own… without fuss or interference… can produce something so beautiful. So worth stealing :)
Maybe not everything needs control, protection, or a safe space care plan.
To me the best things bloom exactly because they're free.
This year's rose just made me think...
We humans grow up in our systems; systems built by others where the decisions are made; families, schools, rules, laws. Guardrails to help us turn out okay. Safety nets. Structure. We're taught to believe it's the only way we can become something good; that we aren't unique, that we belong to a group of people a label, a team we must pick or be picked to play on.
But this rose bush out the back, it's a system too. A living thing. But no one's watching over it. No one keeps it safe.
And yet... somehow... it produces something stunning. Something wild, unplanned, and deeply beautiful. I am amazed and so happy to be alive gifted with such beauty available.
Maybe not everything needs to be raised under a perfect system.
Do all living things have a right to just… grow on their own?