Did roses ever die?

No. The roses never die.

I mean, I do nothing for them except trim them back every few years. I don't water them, fertilize them—nothing. My mom and grandma used to baby theirs. Miracle-Gro every year. Hack them up so each plant focused on just a few blooms. For pity's sake, the town I grew up in is called "Rose City." "The Rose Quarter" is the area with the arenas and the convention center. There's even the International Rose Test Gardens (where a couple Librarians were filmed).

But I grow roses in Colorado Springs. I can't grow anything else—well, except rhubarb. But roses never die.

About twelve years ago, my neighbor's aspen trees were coming up in my yard. Root sprouts crept under the fence. Aspens are quite fragile, and at 6700', our house isn't high enough for them. I gently dug them up but their roots were wrapped around a rosebush root. So I cut the root and transferred the whole thing to the other side of the yard where I wanted some shade.

The aspens died within a couple months. The root grew into a new rose bush that's still there.

If the roses ever die, they'll be killed by something totally unexpected. Like a Chupacabra. Or an alien. Or, maybe, they'll just croak one day and we'll never know the reason. We'll look out the kitchen window one morning and see Satan and the archangel Michael fighting over the dried, thorny corpse of a rose bush lying on the ground. You know, like Moses.

Just as long as they don't touch my rhubarb.

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