I put off tending our rose bed, discouraged by the sight of the brown grasses, drooping tree leaves and suffering shrubs in the area. I keep the rose garden in memory of my father who was crazy about roses. He’s the source of my green thumb and love of the world of plants. He was an imperfect man, but in my early days he was my sun and illuminated my world. I grow roses to remember the best of him.
I finally got the courage to see how bad things were, gathered tools and hose. What I found surprised me. All the plants were putting out tiny, tentative new leaves. Half actually were forming buds. My insufficient watering and one tiny shower in weeks had held the line!
Roses can be challenging to care for. Susceptible to black spot; favorite munch of Japanese beetles; fussy about water and light; thorny and scratchy even when you are doing your best to take care of them. Still the joy of seeing a perfect rose bud, then the opening flower, is, for me, unsurpassed in the garden. Color, scent, shape — all combine to delight the senses. So we keep trying to grow them even in parched and inhospitable conditions.
Things have been looking bleak in Washington, too, where our “blame-duck” president, as my husband calls him, has been trying a scorched-earth policy where he is the heat-wave emergency and our democracy is singed and burned. In these circumstances having your inexperienced spokespeople call our country the “hottest” is strange indeed. Inflation is hot; climate change is hot; tariffs are burning job development and consumer wallets; deploying federal troops to “police” citizens in our capital where crime is falling, not rising— that’s hotly illegal. When you refuse scientific consensus, demolish regulations and programs protecting us from pollution and warming, then blame windmills instead of oil companies, you need to duck. When erratic, illegal and ignorant actions on tariffs threaten global trade, alienate important allies, and raise prices for our businesses and residents, and you are unwilling to handle the resulting data like a grown-up, you need to duck. Recent “negotiations” with Japan, one of our largest trading partners, left their prime minister calling our lead negotiator/president “not a normal person.”
Inviting Vladimir Putin, indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes ongoing, to our country was a shocking flaunting of international opinion and crucial alliances. Switching positions to leave Ukraine in the dust of bombs and destruction is not only dishonorable but raises some troubling questions. What does our president owe Putin? What does Putin know? Does he have the Epstein files? In a way it is fitting that the sordid relationship with Epstein is the one scandal of so many that has been difficult for the administration to shake despite many desperate efforts. Will we see a pardon for convicted sex abuser Ghislane Maxwell? If so, why? The thought is revolting and raises questions that the public deserves to have answered.
As I fill the watering can, I pull the huge crabgrasses — about the only plant that is thriving in this hot and parching summer, along with the strangling vines. I weed into the dusk, hardly able to see what I am doing, something like how treading through the daily news feels. The roses show their stress; thorns abound. Our democracy looks a good bit like my rose bed — bedraggled and struggling. Every effort to protect our democracy, every protest, every lawsuit, every stand-out, conversation with a neighbor, or letter to the newspaper is like a brief shower on the parched landscape, nourishing and sustaining us through the drought. And still, there are buds, shiny new leaves. The will to bloom is fierce. So it is with our beloved democracy.
Judy Wagner lives in Northfield.