You're looking at Lance's rosebush—the plant in the background with the red flowers in case you don't see anything that looks like a rosebush. Until Phil spent a good part of the day hacking out the weeds, it was choked by tumbleweed (right rear) and greasewood (right foreground). On the left is an overgrown butterfly bush. You can see all the dead branches in the rosebush, but there was no way I could get to it to prune it.

When Lance was a kid, he briefly thought he wanted to have a garden. I was excited to think he might be following in my and his grandmother's footsteps, so I assigned a plot to him. I must confess that the ground I gave him was in the rear of our back yard where the soil was the saltiest and clayiest. I'd dug in some mulch and installed drip watering and called it good.

Lance bought the rosebush, a Chrysler Imperial—a perfect choice for a kid who was going to grow into a car guy. I gave him a few irises (he liked the black ones), and he arranged rocks and chunks of firewood around his garden. After a season or two, he lost interest in it. But I think he inherited his grandmother's green thumb and applied it to the rosebush.

That was 15 or 20 years ago, and the bush has been amazing. As you can see, even in the salty, clayey soil, even neglected except for drip watering and a handful of fertilizer every few years, it's covered with beautiful red roses all summer long every year. They smell wonderful, too. I wish I could upload the scent.

After Phil cleaned out the brush today, I went back there and cut off all the dead branches. (I know it's way too late to do real pruning this year.) I'm seriously afraid to do much more than that. It seems to be thriving without me, and I don't have the Busch green thumb!