Last year around this time I started kind of feeling...roses.

A children's theater in La Habra was doing "The Little Prince," and I was thinking about trying out for the part of the rose. I bought a rose bush, and asked people to call me Rose. I didn't end up trying out for the play (it was too far away without a car), but the name stuck.

The rosebush didn't do very well. I'd been good with plants before, but not last year. Plus I couldn't get the watering right, it was always too much or too little. Holes spread through the leaves and the flowers got moldy.

By last month it really seemed dead. The orange hips looked like accusing birdheads. Everything else'd fallen off.

A couple weeks ago, though, for the fun of it, I dug a hole in the ground between the shed and the fence, and a neighbor helped me transplant the rosebush into it. (A tough old bird. I offered him gloves but he said that'd take the fun out of it.) We protected it from the lawnmowers a yard or so around with a nifty kneehigh fencey thing.

Now it's budding, all over. Much lusher and more confident-looking than I remember from last year.

It reminds me of a children's song my dad wrote a few years ago about the springtime. There's a line that goes, winter's not that strong