The Cultivated Rose among Wild Roses

Every year, around Valentine's Day or sometimes on Mother's Day, we get some potted miniature roses. When they start doing poorly indoors in their pot, we plant them outside. I don't actually have any gardening skills, so everything that I plant is overrun with the wild variety. That's how this miniature red rose found itself surrounded by wild roses.

I didn't plant the wild roses. They came here on their own and they are taking over wherever no resistance is offered.

The bloom of the cultivated rose is bigger and more elaborate and artful.

It is a more obviously attractive flower.


 But the wild roses are stronger and more plentiful and they attract more insects.

Even in our untended pasture, the wild roses are taking over.

But for the time being in our little flower garden, the cultivated roses and the wild are living side by side.

Some people think that it has to be either or -- wild or cultivated. But I think we should have both. It's nice to have a cherry tree that gives big fruit. But somehow no little cherry trees sprout from its dropped seeds.

On the other hand, our wild fields are full of blackberry bushes that got there by themselves. Nobody planted them, and nobody watered them, but there are more than enough blackberries in the pasture every year when they ripen to feed entire families.

It's good to plant things and grow them by the sweat of your brow, but how much sweeter it is when things grow by themselves and spread and multiply and need no help from us.

I very much support the idea that the cultivated and the wild varieties can live side by side.  People think that chimpanzees are wild, so they cannot live among us. But there are ways to make it work. I not only spend a lot of time with Bow interacting with him, I also get a lot done that is not specifically to do with Bow while we are together. Productivity need not suffer due to proximity.

Bow enjoys relationships with many different people, but we cannot all go in at the same time.When I am in the pens with Bow, we enjoy a close relationship that includes grooming

But Bow also is on very good terms with Lawrence.

Sometimes, it is not safe for someone to go in with Bow, but they still maintain playful relationships. Leo likes to play chase with Bow, even though he does not get to go into  the pen.

The cultivated and the wild varieties can grow and thrive together. It's not always either/or. Sometimes it can be both.