Tudor Rose

Well, I did it, I got us a rose bush. And I pulled out a dead bush, and I planted the rose bush, which I shall name the Tudor Bush in honor of my favorite author… and I wish it didn’t sound quite so dirty, but oh well.

Speaking of dirt. This next sentence shall perhaps clue the discerning eye into the fact that I am something of a gardening virgin. It turns out: gardening makes you dirty.

!

I was not quite expecting this amount of filth. Gardening was hard on my muscle-free arms and prickly on my newly buffed and manicured feet. I endured a lot of tickling to get those calluses off. Now I am kinda realizing people grow them for a reason. They serve a biological purpose. They help keep every FRICKING STICK AND PEBBLE FROM FEELING LIKE SHARDS OF GLASS. Prickly glass.

I was wrestling with the bush I was trying to get rid of when my neighbor wandered over, Avon catalog in hand. In flip-flops. I in my gardening gloves (they are purple! So cute! Shame to get them dirty…) and SPF 50 were wrestling a plant of less than a foot high. That sucker had IRON roots, I tell you. (Or, wait, that also might have been the pipe I hit with my LARGE SHOVEL. Hee. Oopsie. Hopefully The Funasaurus won’t read that part. I buried it, no one will notice, right?) So anyway, here I am in a sundress, flashing the entire neighborhood as I treat the sad little dead bush like a rabid alligator, and my neighbor is all, “Er, do you want a hand with that?”

I said “No” in the most yes-please-y way possible.

So she took hold of the bush, and yanked it out with her manicured fingers while I and my LARGE SHOVEL and gardening gloves stood by and watched.

Apparently she is not a gardening virgin.

So then I planted the new rose bush, and used my very burly set of pink floral gardening equipment to do it.



Can you see? Here’s a close-up:



See the bit of dirt? I used it!

I also forgot roses have thorns so I got scratched everywhere possible, including my BUM. But that was not so much due to the rose bush as the sad little dead bush behind me that I forgot about when I sat back to admire my handiwork. Ow.

Last night we went to a charity event. I am much more suited to charity events. Pretty dresses? Yes, please! Copious amounts of wine and valet parking and gourmet cupcakes? Oh, I was in heaven! Charity suits me. Gardening... was a bit of a stretch.

But now I have this in my yard.



And this.



Mrs. Tudor, this bit of princess-y deviance was for you.