I've been awake now for about an hour and a half, so still under the covers listening to the fan (headphones are in another room or I'd be listening to music) and watching the pattern on my bedroom drapes appear. What will the day bring? I've been thinking about the things I'm thankful for. One "thankful" leads to another "thankful". The thankfuls intertwine ... Like the climbing rose I have so carefully trained to follow the roof line along the front porch to my home ... .
The rosebush came with the house. Originally, it was planted near the back porch. My husband, who is tall, inevitably tangled himself in it on the way towards the back door. More often then not he'd walk right in to a thorn and come in wiping blood from his forehead. I carefully removed the thorns hoping to solve the problem, but one fine summer morning I walked around the corner and that climbing rose was sheared down ... "A man should be able to come in to his own house without having to work around the rosebush from hell" ... I took what there was of the root and replanted it on the north side of the yard behind the scalloped white picket fence that my husband had built in a summer long past. The secret garden I called that area, because you could only see it if you went looking for it ... It was pretty well blocked from view by either the house or the large azaleas. I didn't hold out much hope for that rosebush, but it took hold and thrived. I carefully tied the shooting branches to the fence training them to venture in both direction and make the corner curving back 90 degrees. It took a few years, but those sweet smelling delicate pink buds began to re-appear ... Eventually, there were so many clusters of fragrant roses that you could smell them all the way upstairs where our bedroom was. Sometimes, I would open the window just a bit to capture the smell. "The rosebush from hell was scraping on the window screen trying to get in last night." My husband really had a thing for that plant. I was pretty sure it would survive another transplant ... But where to? I walked all over our lot trying to find a perfect location for that amazing rosebush. I settled on the front corner of the front porch ... as far away from the entry as possible. I installed a few small nails on the corner column driving the nail through a decorative bead ... Just in case anyone got near enough to notice ... And then I zig-zagged nylon fishing line back and forth creating a lattice. At the roof, under the eave, I screwed a few hooks in bridging them together with the fishing line.
I was nervous when it came time to move the plant. Hours were spent carefully unwinding the branches from the fence. I wanted as many long branches as possible, thinking they would adapt to the fishing line trellis. It was a major mess to move that thing! By time I had it in place it didn't look at all like I had imagined ... All weepy and broken ... dangling from a few pieces of invisible fishing line. What a mess! Now, here we are several years later. That rosebush was the first change I made to the very formal rigid landscaping that framed our front facade. Now everything out there has been updated ... uprooted and replanted. I wrapped a chain around those manicured rows of boxwoods and pulled them out with the Jeep. My husband, skeptical at first, helped me place metal edging into the ground and behind it's curvilinear border I plant pansies or petunias ... Day lilies and hydrangeas ... . It's really very pretty ... and inviting. The rose bush blooms almost continuously and plays host to several little bird nests. Yeah, it has thorns ... when they harden I gently push on them while I support the branch, they snap right off. Every flower, tiny yet perfectly formed, seems to me to be a thankful.