Dear Reader:

This is normally the time of the year when I am showing off my Confederate Rose “Bush” with all its shades of white, pink, and dark pink blooms. It is a joy to behold. *The picture below was taken in the Fall of 2018.

I was so enamored of it I would take photos of every color bloom arriving from white to dark pink.

The blooms always reminded me of my childhood…making flower blooms out of colorful tissue paper. And then the history teacher in me always loved the legend behind the Confederate Rose.

“Once the Confederate Rose was pure white. During the Civil War, a Confederate soldier was fatally wounded in battle. He fell upon a white rose as he lay dying. During the course of the two days he took to die, he bled more and more on the flower, till at last the bloom was covered with his blood. When he died, the flower died with him. Thereafter, the Confederate Rose (or Cotton Rose), opens white, and over the course of the two days the bloom lasts, they turn gradually from white to pink to almost red, when the flower finally falls from the bush.”

It was after the fall bloom of 2018 that suddenly the limbs on my Cotton Rose atrophied and nothing grew on them. I cut that huge “bush” (tree) way back…and last year it revived again…but suddenly the same thing happened this summer… bare stalks with no green leaves and dead pods appeared …I was heartbroken again. I just left it as it was then.

I decided to wait a few more weeks until it would normally stop blooming and cut it way back again and try that tactic over one more time.

But then Wednesday evening…as I walked over to it…I noticed that the few leaves still clinging to the bare stalk /branches looked healthier now …and on one stem…There it was!… The bud of promise and courage. Overcoming all odds one bud/pod is desperately trying to bloom in the last days of the normal fall season.

Never give up hope…that goes for me and the tight bud desperately attempting to be the only bloom this year on a bare bush that looks like it is fighting for its life.

I will be watching it like a hawk…and pray it opens to the purest white bloom, slowly turning pink, and then dark maroon. (like this photo of an earlier bloom, two years ago, changing colors) If it happens it will make me happy beyond happy….Hope is alive and thriving for the Confederate Rose Bush. What a great example of never giving up!

As fragile and tenuous as life is…when it comes right down to it…don’t we all fight our greatest fight trying to continue breathing in it? Life is beautiful!

So until tomorrow….”Life isn’t about finding yourself…it is about creating yourself.” George Bernard Shaw

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Jake got to go fishing, shrimping, and crabbing with his granddad for his nine weeks good kindergarten report…I think we have another little “Huck Finn” who would rather be crabbing than having to go to school…the outdoors with marine life is his “Happy Place.” He is filled with wonder and awe in this new domain.

My garden keeps creating itself over and over….( I bought some “rocking red” ‘Dianthus”) to add in different spots in the garden for more color.