This pink rose was a reject from the mother of all Long's Drugs, a vast store at Rockridge, open until midnight and you could get just about anything you wanted there. Including Alice. I even bought Jaz tempera paints, and Jacquard silk dyes there when I ran out of teaching supplies. A friend dubbed it Schiaparelli after the Italian designer famous for her indecipherable pinks. Another compared it to raising a child and named it Perseverance. It was an unmarked bareroot in a plastic bag that cost something like $3. I took a chance on it, never expecting it to live. I nursed it back to health, tended it for nearly two decades. It was always spindly, and touch and go. I thought I'd lost it during the drought. It only has one bloom a year but oh, what a magenta. My only complaint was that it had no odor. I'd dutifully sniff the solitary blossom each year. And was disappointed. Nada. Well, this year, it has a sweet scent like no other. It was only after the center fully opened. A rose rose. Come into its own after so many years. I think it liked all the rain too.
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