I’m a Garden Warrior. From the first day Spring starts to show after the long Winter, until it gets too cold to be outside in the Fall, I work in the yard whenever I get the chance.

I have several perennial gardens, a kitchen garden and a small rose garden. When I am tending to my roses, which is often as they are so particular, I find myself humming the old Lynn Anderson song, Rose Garden.

Mind you I am NOT a country fan by any means, but this song was played often around my house when I was a kid, and it has kind of stuck in my head ever since. Especially when I unwind amongst my roses.

As I was preparing my roses for Winter the other day, I found myself humming a few bars of Rose Garden yet again. This time I stopped to think about what the song means, now that I have gone through my divorce and no longer have someone who might be worthy of a rose garden. I was reminded of one particular section of lyrics:

Along with the sunshine
There’s gotta be a little rain some time

In other words, we’ve got to take the good with the bad; and without a little rain, we would be unable to grow. Relationships take work, but together a couple can weather any storm, as long as both are equally invested.

It’s when one person decides to check-out that the trouble starts. If someone in the relationship is expecting sunshine and roses without putting in the effort to tend to the garden; or by taking the other person’s dedication for granted, maybe they don’t deserve a prosperous garden.

My ex-husband used to tell me it wasn’t up to one person to make someone else happy. But it seemed pretty easy for him to BLAME one person for his unhappiness – mainly me. If he couldn’t tell me he was unhappy, why should he expect me to tend to the roses all on my own? Even though I provided him a rose garden, he had no appreciation for it. He wanted what gardeners call a “hard prune.” To cut the plants all the way to the ground in order to start over.

Now, I have my own rose garden, and I gladly reap what I sow. Even though there is still a little rain sometimes, I know the rain doesn’t last long and I need it to grow.