Climbing Peace

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

~Thomas Grey

It is hard to bloom unseen in a small garden with a sharp-eyed artist on the prowl, but this beauty was almost overlooked nonetheless. Climbing on a fence thickly shrouded with vines, it was only a chance, flickering, beam of late afternoon sun catching a corner of a flower petal that caught my eye. And then, the scent of it...a deep honeyed sweetness that catches at the back of the throat. Kind of like gingered apricot chutney. So glad I looked up at the right moment.

My friend Helen M gave me this Climbing Peace rosebush as a birthday present six years ago. I love roses but feel I don't have adequate space and time to devote to their culture right now, and so I shoved this lovely plant in a corner, and hoped for the best. Although unfed, unwatered, unpsrayed, unpruned, and essentially untended in any way, it still does its best and surprises me every spring with a few blooms of unsurpassed beauty. Its persistence is a kind of genius. And also, a mystery.