This story begins many years ago (actually before the turn of the century) when I was a teenager. Yes, in those dim days of yesteryear, Texas was a wild and untamed place, and teenagers could sometimes get their drivers license at 14 years of age. So, armed with my newfound freedom and mobility, I went about the business of exploring San Antonio and finding new and interesting places to spend my misspent youth.
On one such foray into unknown territory I came across a nursery, and was intrigued by the beauty of a very small rose in a 1-gallon pot. Since this tiny sweetheart rose cost less than the accumulated change in my pocket, I bought it, took it out to "The Farm" and planted it in a spot where my mother would be sure to find it the next weekend. "The Farm" was an inexpensive and dilapidated plot in an unpredictable creek bottom, which my father had selected as the perfect place to retire. So my father and mother spent every weekend working on the place and preparing for the long anticipated eventuality.
My plan was perfect: do something nice that you have never done before; say nothing about it; and watch to see what happens. Needless to say, my mother was puzzled the next weekend when she found the rose. After sharply questioning my father about "what had he done", and getting no satisfactory response, she eventually put two and two together. Needless to say, she was blessed, and needless to say, the little sweetheart rose became one of her treasures.
Years passed, my parents retired to "The Farm", I went away to college, graduated, started my career in the computer industry, and the little sweetheart rose prospered. All was according to plan and all was right with the world until -- the letter came in the mail and the condemnation proceedings began. You see, one of the downsides of buying cheap land in a creek bottom as a place to retire, is that some electric utility may want to use that same creek bottom for a lake to cool its new power plant. My father’s efforts to resist the electric utility were futile; the land was condemned; and the little rose moved to the Hill Country, where my mother planted it under a big oak tree. More years passed, the oak tree grew, the shade was complete, and the little rose succumbed. So my mother went back to the same nursery and bought what she thought was the same rose. This time she planted it in the sunlight, and it prospered.
More years passed, and my mother was no longer to work in the yard. She needed a little help pruning her roses, and I sent Fernando to help her. Now Fernando is a very remarkable man, an absolute genius in so many ways, and an extraordinary person. His great love is carpentry, and to this point in his life he had really never planted much of anything. As he was trimming the rose, he looked down at the clippings and wondered what would happen if he planted them. It was an amazing thought for Fernando and quite unexpected. It was something that he had never tried; it was something he knew nothing about; and it was something he really did not believe he could do. But right then and there, something inside of him said something like, "Try it, you’ll like it!" Fernando picked up a couple of clippings, took them to the Peaceful Habitations, stuck them in the ground (essentially in an ash heap where an old house had burned years before), and sprinkled a little water on them. His plan was perfect: do something nice that you have never done before; say nothing about it; and watch to see what happens.
A month or two later I noticed two strange new rose bushes happily growing out of the ash heap, and I asked Fernando, "Where did these come from, and what are they?" It was only then that Fernando told me the whole story.
Well, several remarkable and wonderful things happened as a result of that day: a whole new world opened for Fernando; I was totally astonished and impressed; the roses grew, and grew, and grew, and bloomed, and bloomed, and bloomed; and the Peaceful Habitations Rose Gardens were born.
So what are the lessons to be learned from all of this?
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Last updated 03/23/2001