Our “antique” roses showing off.

Perhaps it is becoming a “mature Boomer” that more and more the little things in life give me such incredible pleasure.

Perfect example is our Courtyard here at our home we call Cypress. These gorgeous roses were original with our 1930’s home and were barely surviving when we started renovating this lovely home, whose beauty was almost destroyed by years of abuse and neglect.

So these rose stalks, we couldn’t call them rose bushes, were dug up from the front of our home and planted out back. They were literally just stuck in the ground and ignored for years while the house tediously became our Cypress home.

Then when the courtyard was designed (mostly by our son Brian), the arbor design was most certainly to include these “antique” roses from the 1930’s. And miracle upon miracle happened before our eyes as after the first year of barely climbing and producing greenery, from then on it has been an absolute nature show of red beauties!

Every time I see something new like a fresh rose or the first hydrangea or the peony making it through another winter, I marvel.

And let me tell you this, dear readers: The day that I stop marveling at these precious simple things in life, that is the day you need to do what my late dad use to say to us when we messed up, “ I’m just gonna have to slap you up side the head!” Of course he didn’t and we laughed but you get my message.

Simply cannot get over this beauty.

Like a secret garden.

Wait until I share with you my now love of watching and identifying birds and you will really think that I have turned that aging corner for sure! That’s okay because I know without a doubt that there are so many of you JUST LIKE ME.