My roses arrived.  I am thrilled.  There are buds and fresh red shoots on each of them.  Today will be spent in making the final preparations to the bed and then planting them.  I look forward to the day, and it will be here sooner rather than later, when I can open the windows in my dining room and see vines shooting up towards the sky, when I can smell the sweet, heady fragrance, when I can listen to the wind teach the leaves to whisper.

One of the things I have always appreciated about these roses, the antique varieties, the climbers and floribundas, was that they really aren't suitable for cutting.  They weren't meant to be cut and placed in a vase.  The blooms are at their best when on the vine.

To me, seeing a rose bush covered in blossoms in varying states, from nascence to decay, is a metaphor for life.  From the newest buds with the deepest color to the older ones with the deepest fragrance.  Like vigor and knowledge in my own life.

There is beauty in this juxtaposition.  Life and death circling one another as the tendrils of the vine intermingle and intertwine.

~ KM Kern