One year a neighbor got a piece of that rose bush and took it home where it grew into a lovely bush in her yard. Meanwhile, after many years of the city cleaning out the ditches and mowing machines coming along, our rose bush seemed to exist no more.
After missing our roses for too long my dad and I went to the lady's house and asked if we could get a piece of it back. We've always felt like it was part of our heritage, this old rose with the beautiful smell. She said yes and we starting digging several rooted stems that were near the outside of the plant.
They survived and grew and were rather spindly, not bushy at all. but the rose blossoms still made you inhale deeply when you stuck your nose at them.
After my dad passed my family really cherished these old-timey things; he always loved roses, and the original plants had seemed to be part of the old farmhouse he was born in. So, if for nothing else, they are important to our family for that alone.
Two years ago Mom hired a fellow to come help with the pruning and pulling around the yard. I had given him instructions on what to pull and what to leave. Sadly he misunderstood and uprooted one of the few old roses we had left. We 'heeled' it back into the ground until I could come back later and move it to a pot to see if I could save it. Roots had been cut.
It's still been a mighty spindly thing to look at, but it stayed green and never froze in the big pot on my deck during the winter. So I'm extremely happy to say that today I discovered that there are rose buds all over it for the first time!
