Black and grey rose cluster design

I am writing because the council has taken the planter by the bin store, and I know you were the one who kept the roses in it alive. Eleven years I have watched you on your knees there with a flask and a pair of secateurs, and I never once said anything, which I suppose is its own sort of rudeness. So here it is.

The bushes were a yellow sort nobody else would bother with, all thorn and blackspot, and you cut them back every March regardless. I used to think it was foolish. Then in June the bloom came in so heavy and sweet that the lads from the flats opposite stopped kicking their ball against the wall and just stood there breathing it in. My husband used to say a rose is only a fuss over nothing. He was wrong about that, and about most things, but not about the thorns.

Yesterday I saw the van and the men with the stumps. I went down in my slippers and asked them to leave one, and the older one just shrugged and said it was coming out with the rest. So I have taken a cutting myself, from the one with the cluster of buds still closed at the bottom. It is wrapped in a damp tea towel in my handbag, and I will put it in a pot on my windowsill on the fourteenth floor, where the wind is terrible and nothing grows.

If it roots, I will bring you the first flower. If it does not, you will at least know I tried.

Yours, with respect, Margaret Dunleavy, Flat 14, Harcourt House