Days of Wine and Roses

Well, actually the weekend involved absolutely no wine for myself -- but it did involve lots of roses!!! I've had myself a very nice weekend with DH, just enjoying spending some quality time with each other, puttering around the garden and venturing out. Today, for instance, we went to a local state park which used to be a famous family's mansion. Today, the grounds are a state park open to the admiring public. Sometimes they host special events there, such as a rose exhibition and judging. Given that June is the rose month, and given that I am particularly determined to stop and smell the roses this year, we didn't really have a choice but to go. 

The weather actually cleared up in the afternoon, so after donning sunscreen, protective clothing, and one of the cute hats I got for my soon-to-be-bald days, we ventured out to the park. The rose exhibition actually consisted of only one conference room full of cut rose specimens, but let me tell you, the smell in that conference room was heavenly! We admired many gorgeous cultivars, including my favorite, Scentimental (which won many prizes), but also an old favorite we used to grow at the first apartment DH (who was just my boyfriend at the time) and I ever shared, Blue Girl, a lovely lavender colored rose with a spicy scent. We've been looking for that rose ever since, as we planted that rose where everyone told us it would never grow, and yet it became a stunning bush full of blooms year after year that the neighbors would stop and smell when they walked the dog in the morning. It became the envy of the neighborhood, and here DH and I were just two young folks with no gardening experience, and a lucky hand for roses. So seeing that Blue Girl today was a sweet blast from the past.

After the rose exhibit, we walked all over the park, enjoying the beautiful vistas at ever turn, admiring the many old trees that grow on the beautiful grounds of the park. Why am I so excited about a few hours of walking about and doing stuff? For me this is quite an achievement these days to walk this much, as I am still working on getting back into better shape. Not surprisingly, then, I needed a nap after we got back home...

Overall, though, I feel better than I ever thought possible little more than a week after my first chemo. I am so lucky that I am surrounded by people who love and support me (even if I'm often too scatterbrained to return emails -- sorry,  guys, I'll get around to it!), with my sweet DH feeding me and caring for me as though I were a little baby bird. All I need to do is rest, and focus on letting the good poison do its work of hunting down and taking out any remaining cancer cells in my body, so that I will soon be disgustingly healthy again. After all, we have a bright future ahead of us, and twelve little frosties, our potential future babies, waiting to be thawed out. When that happens, there will be no wine for me, either, but there will be roses for sure, I'm thinking.