Rose­bush Watch offi­cially ended July 1, when I received an apol­ogy for the van­dal­ism of my rose­bush. I for­got to tell every­one. Sorry. The cam­era is gone, as is the Rose­bush Watch page. The bush is now in its sec­ond bloom cycle and is cov­ered with new flowers.

The Rose­bush Van­dal has struck again. This time, I caught the per­pe­tra­tor on video. Obvi­ously, I will not be post­ing the video of the com­mis­sion of this most recent crime until such time as I am able to deter­mine whether or not it is legally safe for me to do so. This time, exist­ing blooms were ripped off. The per­pe­tra­tor demon­strated an inor­di­nate amount of glee. When I get a sec­ond to catch up with post­ing the daily videos to the YouTube, I will also upload phở­tos of the dam­age. It is too dark right now to take any.

I have a rose­bush. It is a flori­bunda with deep red–almost maroon–flowers. I’ve been work­ing on it for a few years now, and I prune it when it needs prun­ing, and I water it every other day, and I feed it and rotate it (it is in a large pot) and clip off dead blooms and what­not. I care for it, rather like some peo­ple care for pets. It is a thing that I am proud of. Proud that I have kept it alive (I have a bad track record with plants); proud that I have been able to trans­form it from the scrag­gly lit­tle runt I bought at a Home Depot some­where into a big, [ . . . ]

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