The name of the rose

I am not going on about my roses again.
OK, so I am.
I just can't help it. I thought they would be shriveled and gone by now, but they just keep going, like the energizer bunny.
Color after color, shape after shape, scent after scent.
They keep on giving.
Every morning I cross the dewy lawn in my bare feet to press my nose against their luxuriant petals, soft as a baby's ear, admire the whorls of their blooms, some tightly furled, others flagrantly supine. I untangle them with my fingers, weigh them, clip them, shake their petals loose so that they sprinkle the verdant lawn.

I really can't think what more I can say to describe my roses, their daily gift to me, their fragrant profligacy. So, I ran the words "a rose" through the babelfish translator, and came up with the following: una rosa, 一朵玫瑰, nam toe, eine Rose, αυξήθηκε, ばら, uma rosa, 장미, роза.
Lovely. A rose in nine tongues.

Then I forced my husband, who was on his way to fulfill some much more practical errand, to take a picture of me and the dogs in front of some of our roses. There, I thought. That's it. I'm done dwelling on the roses. Now I can rest easy. The roses have been completely and thoroughly documented.

Uhm, OK, except for this one more shot which really shows the fullness of their spread.

And this one, which demonstrates how the shamelessly hot-pink ones are fading and blousing as the blood-red ones hit the peak of their bloom in the background. Yah. That's it. Done.

So off we went in the car to the confluence of Cherry Creek and the Platte River, to cool off the dogs on the summer's hottest day so far. It's been a while since we visited the confluence. More than a year. The last time we did, we got a $50 ticket for having our dogs off the leash while swimming. Now, if you ask me, it's much more potentially perilous to have our dogs ON their leashes while swimming in the current. But that's just me and who am I to question the Denver police department.
Yes, we paid the ticket.
No, apparently we did not learn our lesson.

Can you get a ticket after the fact for displaying your crime on film? If so, can we get a discount for having Max on a leash in this picture? Sam's not really a dog, anyway. Just ask him.

And this was in Brazil. I mean, Franz Josephland. Where it is actually illegal to have a dog ON a leash.

All wet and cool and enjoying some lawn time back at home. Is this not the most tranquil scene? Oh, those roses in the foreground? Totally incidental.

OK, ok. But look how the light was coming in between the houses, lighting up the humidity in the air, which is so rare in Denver as to be called phenomenal. It' s not every day you get light like this on the plains.

Well, this one is just completely gratuitous.

Shut up. No, seriously.

Geese on the beach at Rocky Mountain lake.

Lilly pads in bloom. Not a rose to be seen.

Geese and duckweed, at a nearby wildlife preserve.
And then I went home and smelled my roses.
Soon, rose season will be over, and it will be tomato season...at which time you will see many more tomatoes than you ever hoped to see. If it's a good tomato year, that is. One can only hope.