The other day I noticed a rose had bloomed – finally! I planted “All My Loving” a couple years ago. The deer love it so much they will trample everything in the way to get to it, even reaching through the cage I had eventually placed around it.

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“All My Loving” (Rosa ‘FRYrapture’) is a hybrid tea rose bred by Gareth Fryer (UK), introduced in 2011. In pictures it is a dense dark green shrubby sort of hybrid tea rose, and quite lovely. Mine has never had the chance to develop any such lushness. 😆 The deer just keep stripping it of leaves and buds, and eating tender new canes almost to the ground.

This year I finally gave up on aesthetic considerations and put a cage around it. I was rewarded with a single rose this summer. It’s the first time this rose has ever bloomed in my garden.

“All My Loving” blooming in spite of black spot.

Planted in 2022, four years later, one single rose – it’s not anything to brag about, really, but this isn’t about bragging, at all. It is a tale of resilience. In spite of being eaten by the deer, in spite of black spot, in spite of my very lazy gardening, in spite of trying and failing for four years, this rose kept on trying and finally bloomed. It’s a beautiful rose, too. Worth waiting for? I don’t know. I’m glad to see it bloom. It has a lovely fragrance. I persist in thinking about how I can provide it better protection from the deer.

… Some things are worth the effort, and the work, and all the verbs…

Anyway. It’s a metaphor.

I yawn and stretch and gaze into the hazy morning sky. Is it cloudy and overcast? Is it the haze of distant wildfires? I don’t know. I know it is Monday, and time to begin again.