Wall of Roses

If you like roses, you might like these next few photos. One is of my Eden, at the end of its first magnificent bloom.  Eden blooms right up into December, but the first bloom is the most magnificent and it always seems to coincide with the opening of the Devon Horse Show and Memorial Day.  Eden will continue to give me roses, but it cannot replicate this kind of show twice in one season.

The other photo is one of what I call "The Wall of Roses".  None of us knows what the name of the rose is, but this bush begins in one garden and extends down nearly to mine.  It only blooms once a year, this week, and it's like trying to count the stars in the sky at night, which is nearly impossible.  The roses don't give off a scent and their color is white, though occasionally a carnation pink one will pop up.  It's propped up by an old pear tree and is one reason to look forward to Spring.

I have another bush that's not quite in its prime yet, so as you can see, there is never any shortage of roses here.  For that reason, St. Therese has to use a bit of ingenuity when she answers my prayers, so on two occasions, when granting a particularly heartfelt and difficult request, she skipped the roses and went to the lilac bush.  The lilac bush only blooms once, but one day in July, there was part of the bush, in bloom again.  My neighbors were even astounded.  When I wondered aloud if this was the answer to my prayer, I received a loud "yes" when I went out the next morning and found that my potted wisteria bloomed again.  Getting it to bloom once takes a miracle, so to see boughs of its heavenly-fragranced flowers hanging where no bud had appeared the previous day was almost too much.

My mother always tells me the difference between a miracle and a coincidence is faith.  I have too much faith to believe in coincidences.