stereotypical single woman

My best friend bought me a rose bush for my birthday. She’s an avid flower gardener and has about a dozen or so different roses in her yard, all of them very beautiful and well cared for. So she was very excited to find out that I had moved somewhere I could plant my own garden. A few weeks ago she took me to a local greenhouse and told me to pick out my birthday present. I hesitated, picked out a small yellow rose bush, while telling her outright that I’ve never had luck with flower gardening. But she convinced me that everything would be fine so the plant came home with me. I planted it in a sunny spot and hoped for the best. It was touch and go for a while to see if it would stay alive. First I had to prune 1/2 the plant away due to black spot, then it was looking droopy for a few days, then it just sat there, doing nothing for about a week. Finally I saw a few flowers starting to bloom this morning.

Thankfully I saw something, because I was becoming very paranoid after doing some research online. I learned that roses are very picky about their living conditions and if they don’t like what they’re fed, how much water they’re getting, the look of their neighbors, etc… they’ll just die. The guilt of killing a very thoughtful, beautiful, and well intentioned gift is just something that I would rather not deal with. It’s not that I’m inept, I’m just used to growing vegetables. Tomatoes aren’t very picky. You plant them, put a soaker hose in the garden and turn it on every few days for a half an hour or so, and fertilize every few weeks. There are very few complications to worry about and you are rewarded with growth you can see on almost a daily basis and vegetables at the end of the summer. Until this morning all the rose bush had given me was a few nasty scratches, but it looks like things might get a whole lot better.