The Bullying Rose

My parents try to make the exterior of the house look pretty -- possibly a byproduct of not having anything like that growing up in rural China and then in urban Vietnam -- but I'm not sure how good of a job they're doing.  My parents (Mother in particular, although Father does pitch in from time to time) love to garden and they do love flowers.  But while they seem to have green thumbs, I'm not sure how good they are at planting and maintaining flowers.

The case in point I bring up are the roses at the front of the house.  Several years ago, Grandmother, while the area between the front lawn and the walk-up to the front door was being tilled and soiled and, uh, prettified, bought rose bulbs.  Why?  Just because.  And so I had to help dig and plant and water and soil and organize.  But that first season it bloomed quite spectacularly, a small but concentrated bush of lush red petals cradled in vivid green leaves.

And I was surprised that rose bulbs, or at least the bulbs Grandmother got, are perennials.  So every spring you can see the stalks erupt from the ground, grow petals, and then bloom.  The stalks got bigger and more numerous, so much so that when in full bloom the stalks hunched over so that the roses hit the soil.  I had to buy one of those grated rose stands so the stalks could stand upright.  But still every year they get bigger and bigger.  That's a sign of a healthy flower, isn't it?

Well, something has happened in the past few years.  I don't remember how, but the flowers right next to it -- they may be roses, they might not be -- have out bloomed the delicate flower bulbs Grandmother bought.  I do not remember who bought them, or how or when they were bought, or even if they are flowers.  But they are dominating the rose cluster next to them, so much so that I've noticed the past few years that Grandmother's roses do not bloom as much as they did in the past.  In fact, some of the roses don't even burst at all, or are aborted when you can see the rose try to unpeel itself while in its nascent white stage.  Those are the sad flowers, the ones that you know are just waiting to bloom but, probably due to the behemoth next to it, gives up the fight.

But there are plenty of rose petals in the cluster next to it.  However it is far from a delicate-looking flower.  It's about five feet tall and has branches with thorns on them.  Do you remember the kid that helped her ex-stripper mom clean my house the night before Mother came home?  On their way out after they got done he ran into those thorns (it was nighttime) and got cut.  I think I've been cut too.  It's a gangly, ugly monstrosity, and it's overwhelming the poor flower Grandmother planted oh-so-many years ago.

So, something should be done about it -- pruning or something, if not outright removal.  Not only is it probably knocking the soil ecosystem in the front lawn flower bed out of balance, it looks mighty disgusting, too.  But I have not heard a peep about it from Mother.  Nor have I raised the issued with her.  Nope, we're just letting it grow and grow and allowing it to sap the life out of the flower Grandmother brought home to us.

You know, that might be the last sign that Grandmother was here.  I don't see anything else around the house that she bought.  Shoot, that's terrible.