Looks more like an oak tree from the northeast than a rose bush!

Our rose bushes have been through a lot here in Arizona. We’ve moved these potted plants via pickup truck to two different dwellings, so they’ve dealt with a lot of travel shock and most of them have dealt with the shock of finally being planted in the ground. They’ve been burnt to a crisp repeatedly by the crazy hot Arizona summer sunlight, so they often lose many of their leaves. And the leaves that do survive are constantly annihilated by Leafcutter Bees who are pre-programmed to use the leaves as building materials to create cocoons for their upcoming offspring.

See the LEAFCUTTER BEE in the center of this photo?
That’s the leafcutter bee in the center of photo flying off to find a better leaf! The bees options are thinning for new, tender, thin leaves.

We love the leafcutter bees and respect the other benefits they bring to our garden, such as much-needed pollination (they are AWESOME pollinators that I believe are doing wonders for our vegetable garden!!), but we often wonder if the rose bushes can handle it. Yet somehow they do. They look worse for the wear, but most of them do manage to produce flowers.

There are two bushes, however, that have not budded much here on our current property. We keep doing our best to provide them proper care:

  • We cover them with a protective screen cloth when conditions are especially inhospitable.
  • We feed and water them well, giving them extra supplements to boost their health.
  • We trim them back when they are struggling to do as they normally do (when they try to grow as high as they normally would expect or want to), but the fact is they are thin and spindly because they are not exactly well.

And yet, although these bushes aren’t the most vibrant they’ve ever been, this week, with the help we’ve provided, they finally produced a single rose each.

It’s a timely message for us humans–a reminder that hope is not lost.

We’ve all been through a lot lately. Though current conditions might be challenging in this country and in the world, with enough special care for each other and ourselves, with enough patience, we will come through this all—maybe a bit broken and battered, but hopefully saving as many lives as possible, avoiding the unnecessary death of all the ones we hold so dear.

Our spirits have been battered, but we too will one day bloom again. Many are blooming already, showing their most beautiful, best selves for all the world to see. Many are awakening to the truth that we are all very intimately connected. We are all one in the same. When the focus is on love of and empathy for one another in these incredibly trying times (NOT judgment of one another, NOT competition with one another), every action we take, every word we write or speak can and will have a positive effect on the whole.

When the opposite is done (when we indulge in judgment of others and competition for who is most right), the exact opposite result will occur—hyperactive egoism (my wants, my needs, without regard for others) will continue unchecked and all will continue to suffer… we will all remain separate in our goals, desires, and personal agendas, entirely unconscious of the fact that any one of us can be the cause of another’s death or can die as the collateral damage of someone else’s egoistic actions.

We are all one, whether we believe it or not, whether we like it or not. Not believing so and not liking it are simply our insecure egos not wanting to grow up-and-into our better selves. When too many of us fall down the rabbit hole that is our egos, we will all fall down the rabbit hole that is the end of our specie’s existence on this planet.

So why fight it? Why fight the fact that we are one species… the collective human species? We are all very much the same. We may speak a thousand different languages, but our childish and ill-mannered egos speak the same exact divisive language—that one is somehow better or more important than another.

We are all stronger when we are all together. We, as individuals and as a species on this planet, are not as special as our selfish, misguided egos allow us to think. When we help just one other among us to blossom, we all have the potential of blossoming together.

So, which will it be? Blossoming like the rose reaching for the sun? Or slipping further and further into the rabbit hole of the human ego? The answer should be obvious. But the beauty of it is YOU get to pick which it will be.

Choose wisely.

Sending my love and respect to all who are struggling right now,

 

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