A rose’s story

This is the last surviving rose bush in my small garden. About seven years ago, she was destined to be discarded. But the gardener, unbeknown to me found a place for her in a secluded overgrown section of a garden bed.

Here, unnoticed, she took time out to recover and started to bloom once again. Her third move was the best one. Just Joey found a happy sunny spot and took on a new lease of life. Year after year, she kept on blooming and giving me pleasure.

The rose speaks of love silently, in a language known only to the heart. – Unknown

Fragrant lockdown life- lessons

During the April and May confinement of  lockdown 2020, I obsessively watched the life cycle of each bud and petal of my long time floral friend, Just Joey. A story of life lessons emerged as I relished each stage of the beauty of the rose. I’ll let her tell the story.

“The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change: Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.”– Paulo Coelho

“The rose is fairest when it is budding new, and hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.” – Sir Walter Scott

A rose is an argument. It proclaims the triumph of beauty over brutality, of gentleness over violence, of the ephemeral over the lasting, and of the universal over the particular. – Alain Meilland

“There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The Rose is without an explanation; She blooms, because She blooms.”– Angelus Silesius

“A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.” – Leo Buscaglia

“If the rose is beautiful flower, it is also because it opens itself.”– Charles De Leusse

Every rose that is sweet-scented within,
That rose is telling of the secrets of the Universal. – Rumi

“Do not watch the petals fall from the rose with sadness, know that, like life, things sometimes must fade, before they can bloom again.” – Anonymous

“A rose dreams of enjoying the company of bees, but none appears. The sun asks: ‘Aren’t you tired of waiting?’ ‘Yes,’ answers the rose, ‘but if I close my petals, I will wither and die.’”– Paulo Coelho

We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today. – Dale Carnegie

I don’t know whether nice people tend to grow roses or growing roses makes people nice. – Roland A. Browne