My Wild Irish Rose

A young woman leaves her parent's home to move to a small home with her newly wedded husband. She brings with her a cutting from the wild rose that has always grown in the hedge along her mother's garden. It is bright and pink and the young woman knows, that when it takes root and grows, it will link her forever with her mother and the land on which she was born. And the rose does take root and it grows along the fence between their fields and her garden. In the summer it spreads along the fence and blooms and lights up that small corner of their land. And then babies are born - one after another until her husband builds his family a new home, a bit bigger, and his wife, not as young as she was, takes a cutting from the wild rose and plants it in what will become her new garden in her new home. In this way she will always be rooted to that spot of earth. Then one year a stranger comes from far across the sea and she asks if she can live in the home that they outgrew and they said yes and when she moved in it was March and the bad winter still lay frozen across the old garden. The plants were so stricken by the deep frost of the winter that the new woman from across the sea was not even sure if they were alive. So she bought shiny new pruning shears and began to gently cutaway the most damaged branches. And then she waited. And then the sun came and the warm rain of spring and then branches grew and reached out along the fence between the garden and the fields until one day, in late June, the new woman saw the new flower buds - masses and masses of them - all over the fence. And she knew and she understood the land was still alive, the heart was pumping again, and life returned. The wild Irish rose, who had blessed the young woman's childhood home, and then her own children's home, now welcomed the stranger from across the sea.