Roses in bloom, May 18, 2010

Back in the Summer of 2001, I enlisted the aid of my only nephew at the time to help me plant a rosebush. It was a little thing I had bought cheaply at a home improvement store a few years earlier - a Royal Highness, I believe - and had kept in an oversized pot since that time. In the past decade this little rosebush has grown to an enormous size, and has produced several offspring that show every sign of matching the parent plant in growth.

Every year, like clockwork, this bush has had its first flush of roses in the last week of May or first week of June. And here we are, two weeks ahead of schedule.

I will have to consult past blog posts to see if I have any records of such early blooms in previous years. It will be interesting to see how the bush has grown over the years.

The roses hung in for a very long time last year, too. This photo was taken on November 13, 2009. The next photos on the memory card are from December 5, 2009 and show the rosebush completely covered in snow!