Take Care of the Roses

She's coming up on three decades of life. You can look at her roots and see the grey bark cracking off what is actually a tree trunk now, whereas you can easily imagine from the shape that she originally took to this soil as a greener variety - more of a vine. Branches cut off in years past have left circling wooden cross sections and smallish holes where the life used to flow out to the leaves & blooms she used to bear. They tell stories about sweet seasons past - blueprints of how the life and death in the elements of each hour brought her to be who she is today. 

Today is ok. It's still bleak but it's been getting warmer outside. She's showing good signs of life after losing somewhere between a half and a third of all of her limbs - mostly just the dead parts, the ones that wouldn't have been fruitful anymore. Tiny intricate bundles of burning red leaves are beginning to unfurl, but she needs the turnover of a new interval - a different angle on the sun before she'll really be ready to show what's stirring inside. She needs time and space. She needs light and food.

There are quite a few plants in the garden & potted inside my new house, but I can't help but to take delicate, attentive care of the roses. They're remarkable - better than a lot of things I've had the chance to call mine. They speak to me. They inspire the poet & the economist in me. I'm an investor, a builder, an economic developer in the broadest sense. Opportunities and solutions are everywhere to me. Lately, the trouble I've faced is getting lost in the weeds & losing clarity on what is central, remarkable, and still holds the ability to bear good fruit. 

Sunset Boulevard by Mark

The roses and I, we'll grow and bloom more fully if all the dead parts get cut off so the life in us can thrive. Brown branches with hollowed out veins, or lurching spindly ones that reach too far will always naturally develop as our extensions, but they're dead. They still cost nutrients, but will never produce. Brown branches prevent rest. They cause confusion and send limited resources to places where there will be no return. Each new branch begins with promise, but daily diverges to a place of fruitfulness or lack.

Today, as you engage your life - determining what to work on,  how to care for your family & your home -  think about what is really central to what makes you remarkable, inspires you, and bears fruit. Watch the extensions of yourself as you enter new seasons of fruitfulness or dormancy for signs of life or death. Wait for evidence to develop, but listen to the signs. If they're dead, cut them off - new shoots will grow there soon. Let yourself rest. Refocus your energy and your resources to the things that are showing life. Take care of the roses.