Roses are red...

And very hard to grow. The Glory of the Garden, and the triumph of successful gardeners.
In the front garden of our "base camp" we have two kinds of roses. One is a hearty, indigenous variety. It makes cute fluffy little pink roses in the spring and all through the summer. Nothing really hurts it and it is capable of growing about twenty feet in a year. Literally. We know because we tried really hard to get rid of it. We dug it up and dumped it on the dirt bank across the road three years in a row. There are now cute little fluffy roses the entire length of our road, and we still have the mother plant in our front garden.

The other rose plant is much more delicate. We planted it, pruned it, fed it banana peels, carried water to it, coated it with organic bug repellent and generally gave it everything that it might need. We've had a few pretty flowers from it, but more often than not the buds come to grief somehow or other.

Until now. We came home after three months to find a little bud, which has bloomed into a most magnificent rose. I wonder if that indicates anything about our gardening skills?