The Last Rose of October

"The Last Rose of October"
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The days are growing shorter and cooler, and the sky is becoming clearer and bluer. It's October, the growing season is ending, and the time of harvest is here. A few hardy blooms remain in my garden. I had the good fortune of seeing a goldfinch perched on the coneflower stalks, pecking at the seeds of the dried flower heads.  With wonder, I observed that the only rose bush is putting forth one more bud.

We inherited this rose bush with the house, before there was a flower bed. It was a sad little thing, growing out of the yard itself at the corner of the house. Last year, only one bloom made it. The leaves were chewed full of holes, and it didn't quite clear a foot in height. When we finally got around to putting in the flower bed on the street side of the house, I decided that the rose would need to be transplanted. It needed to be dug up anyway, otherwise the rototiller would have destroyed it. Up it came and into a temporary home while we weeded, turned over and amended the soil, and bought a few perennials. I didn't have high hopes for the rose, but we put it back in the ground anyway.

This year, we made sure to fertilize the rose bush in particular, and keep the pests off as best we could. This last October rose is the seventh bloom. It's a blinding hot pink, so bright that the human eye and the camera have a difficult time focusing on it. The chilly weather has preserved the rose for days now, a late summer firework. I took this photo early on a Saturday morning.  The sun had only just come over the horizon, and a few raindrops from the storms the night before lingered on the silky petals.  Liquid gems sparkled and caught my eye, and my lens.  

The photo was originally in color, but I want the focus to be on the lighting, and to capture the melancholy feel that autumn sometime brings.  Bittersweet, the end of warm sunny days, but the beginning of wonderful crisp days that lift my soul on brisk winds.