Call The Vatican

Some sort of miracle has occurred. I am at a loss to explain it.

We planted three rose bushes two years ago. In my mind, I was burying them, not planting them. Because the dark and bloody mysteries of roses are beyond me. I can barely grow mildew on my shower curtain. How am I going to tend to those things?

Like all come-ons from smart salesman, the plants had a rose bloom on them when they were displayed for sale. If there is a prettier thing in this world that I’m not married to I haven’t seen it. They were cheap and irresistible. Three of them went in at the corner of the garden near the driveway. They lost the bloom they had and did nothing. The difference in appearance between a thriving rose bush and dead one is not spacious for a goodly part of the year.

I tried to find out about the plant, of course. But that’s like walking up to a pretty girl in a bar and expecting her to run off with you because you tell her you read a medical textbook about females once. Not likely. I read a dizzying array of advice about roses that approached a sort of kabuki play/necromancy incantation/ Faust bargain/atom-splitting/pointillist painter complexity coupled to a Confucian subtlety; it made me throw up my hands, cut off the wild stems, dump on triple the recommended fertilizer, and forget about it.

There are fifty or so dark purplish red blooms on the things right now, with buds for at least another fifty more. I understand so little about what has happened that I don’t even know how to go about lying about it to take credit for it.

Hmm. I’d never make it in politics, would I?