Patience and Petals

There are currently fifty-four rose bushes growing at Matlock Farms, representing twenty-one different varieties. Most are David Austin roses.

That sounds impressive until you realize what a rose actually is.

A rose is not a permanent thing. It is an agreement.

You spend months tending a plant that offers only brief moments of perfection. You prune. You fertilize. You water. You watch for disease. You protect new growth. Then one morning, almost without warning, a bloom opens.

For a few days, the world is more beautiful.

Then the petals fall.

And you begin again.

I’ve started propagating roses from cuttings, not because I plan to sell them, but because I want more of them. I want roses along the fences, near the pastures, beside the barns, and anywhere else beauty might decide to visit.

It’s a strange investment when you think about it. More work. More waiting. More opportunities for disappointment.

Yet every gardener understands the temptation.

A rose never promises permanence. Its value comes from the fact that it doesn’t last.

The bloom you admired this morning may be gone by next week. Summer heat will fade it. Rain may knock the petals loose. An insect may damage it before it fully opens. Every flower exists under a deadline.

Perhaps that’s why roses affect us so deeply.

They remind us that beauty is often temporary, and that temporary things are still worth caring for.

In some ways, the roses have become old friends.

Each variety arrives on its own schedule. Some bloom heavily and disappear. Others linger. Some produce flowers so extravagant they hardly seem real. Others are simple and understated. Year after year they return, and year after year I find myself waiting for them.

Not because I have forgotten what they look like.

Because seeing them again matters.

Farming teaches many practical lessons, but roses teach patience better than almost anything else on the property. They ask for work without immediate reward. They require faith in a future bloom you cannot yet see.

And when the flowers finally come, they stay just long enough to remind you why the waiting was worthwhile.

Then they leave.

And you wait once more for your old friends to return.