cc: file, Mom, Sara and Des, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Diane Cluff, Tony Hafen, Claude and Katherine Warner, Forest and Amy Warner, Ivan and Chell Warner, and Eric and Renee Miner
If any of you ever choose to have a rose garden, it is good to remember the weekend following Valentines Day is a good day to prune the rose bushes. When I planted our rose garden I had all of this symbolism in mind. There was suppose to be one (or was it two) rose bushes for each of our kids. All 12 of the rose bushes are Texas antique roses. They were intended to cover a spectrum of colors from pink to white to yellow to orange to violet to purple to red and back to pink. The orange and yellow one's never bloomed. Several of the rose bushes died over the last 8 years or so. At least a couple of new rose bushes have been started from sprigs or underground roots that came up a couple of feet from where they started. There are now 9 rose bushes, three of which are very small.
The tree like bush with the largest thorns has purple roses with large petals that fall off very easily. As I pruned it yesterday, three quarters of the bush was dead. I realized it has been at least a couple of years since I have worked with the rose garden. I looked at my calendar last year, and saw that on Valentine's Day weekend I went on a 'junk food campout' with Rob to Spring Creek Park. The Stake Father's & Son's campout this year will be at the same park May 16th and 17th. Some of the prettist roses are white, on the second bush from the front next to the greenhouse. After pruning, the tallest remaining rose bush, was next to this to the west, and as I recall it also has whitish flowers. One of the most prolific is in the far back corner next to the greenhouse, and it almost always has dozens of pretty little pink roses on it. Next to this is a reasonable sized bush with petite roses with large dark red petals with a pretty little yellow circle around where the seeds grow. The fastest growing bush is right next to the walkway as you pass the greenhouse and is always sticking it's thorns out to 'get you' as you walk by. It is prolific in terms of the number of pink roses it generates.
I have got a little bit better at pruning the roses over the years. I now wear leather gloves. So today my hands do not look like they were run through a meat grinder like they often have in the past. However, I did have on a short sleeve shirt yesterday and probably have 100 little scabs where the thorns told me they did not like what I was doing to them. Every year I do work with the roses, I remember a wonderful conference talk by Apostle Hugh B. Brown. In this talk he said as he pruned his roses one year he saw a little tear (noun) form at one of the cuts and seemed to hear in his mind's eye the words 'Why are you doing this to me?' He recalled when he was in the military service and how he learned he did not get a promotion he was due because he was a 'Mormon' (the message was written in red ink across the recommendation on the desk of his commanding officer). Elder Brown beautifully described how he talked to the rose bush and told it the firmness he was showing in pruning was for it's own good, even if it hurt and it wasn't recognized at the time, and it (the rose bush) would actually create more roses and develop a stronger root system as a result of the pruning. He recalled his earlier military life and how he had heard in his mind's eye the master gardener say 'Trust me, this hurts me as much as it does you, but it is for your own good.' I remember one year, how as the blood ran down my arm from a particularly deep poke by a thorn how I sat there and watched it and thought about our Savior, his crown of thorns, and the pain and anguish he suffered for us, for our mistakes and our sins.
I hope each of you will develop a relationship with the master gardener, and that when you have your time of trial and testing and pain you will be able to recognize His support and assistance, His love and concern. He does exist and He loves each one of us, especially when we turn our back on Him and don't recognize our need for a good pruning. I know."