It is hard to believe that four full years have passed since the drizzly day in May when my cousin Anne and I hacked through a deep drift of long-ignored Harison’s Yellow roses, hoping to salvage, from the back of a neglected cottage, a fragment of garden history for our own yards.
Arms bloodied, shirts wet with sweat and raindrops, we untangled hollow dead canes thick with thorns from green branches heavy with promised blooms, the progeny of some shrub carried here in another century by miners headed west in search of fortune.
Skeptical that their woeful little roots could find purchase again, we planted the roses in fresh beds at Anne’s and near the compost bins at my house. And then we waited for signs of new life.
My specimens never revived. But in Anne’s sunny front corner, the miner’s roses took — and how. This year, those scraggly twigs emerged as an exuberant cloud of glossy deep-green leaves punctuated by lemony blooms open to bees and shouting to those who pass by: We’re here! Alive! Rooted in our new homes and perfuming the air for generations to come.
Dana Coffield: dcoffield@denverpost.com, 303-954-1954 and
