Growth

There is a plant outside my house that has been growing over the summer. A friend suggested the plant may be a rose, an assumption under which I have been working since I learned that roses have thorny branches. This is one of these facts that, in hindsight, is something you "should have known." When I learned the characteristics of a rose, I was one of the lucky 10,000 that day.

For the last month or so, the plant has been languishing. One of the stems started to wilt and turn red. I did not tend to the plant at the beginning of the season, for at that time I thought it may be a weed. Over the last two weeks, rain came, then a period of warmth. The plant must have enjoyed the weather because a flower started to bloom.

I was positively surprised -- delighted, nay excited -- when I looked out the window and saw pink petals. (The word "nay" was not really necessary there but I seldom have a sentence where "nay" would fit in unlike the last one!)

The plant has been in the background this year. I was excited as it grew, concerned when I thought it would be a weed, elated when I learned it could bloom to be a rose, sad when I thought the plant would not grow any more before the end of the warm weather. Then, finally, blessed, as the plant bloomed. For how long the petals will last I don't know. For now, I am in joy. Outside I look and see seas of green and blue. Now, there is a pink flower. It is beautiful, complex.