“Such is another of the garden’s many mysteries,” rejoined her father. “You are but twenty-one; I am well past forty. I will be an old man before long if the hands of time do not stop! But I never tire of this place for a day. In all God’s things there is unceasing revelation, unceasing creative imagination unfolding ever outward.”

He stopped, crinkling his eyebrows.

“I never paused to think of that before this moment, Sabina,” he said. “Might that be one of the reasons God places growth in what he makes, so that there is constant newness emerging out from within—new leaves, new skin for the lizards, new hair for us men and women, new blossoms, new fingernails!”

“Papa, sometimes you say such funny things!” laughed Sabina, the little girl emerging again in the high, bell-like tinkling of her laughter.

“But think of it! Always there is a part of nature that is dying to make room for the new—the browning fronds of the fern to give place for the tender new green unrolling from the heart of it, just as you were observing in that little fellow there. Even these rose blossoms around us over there in the rose garden,” he said, gesturing widely with his hand at the plants he loved so much, “even the outside petals brown and slowly shrivel so as to open wider and reveal more of the inside. Then each blossom itself dies so that another might take its place.”

“There aren’t many roses blooming now,” said Sabina, “in the middle of winter.”

“Not many, you are right,” agreed the baron, “but a few brave buds will burst through the stiff stems and icy ground, just to remind us that life still goes on inside, though our eyes cannot always see it. And if such a persistent blossom is determined to force its way out into the sun and air, not the fiercest hailstorm, not the strongest wind, not the coldest snow will prevent its doing so. It may not be a luxuriant blossom, but the strength of life will be vital within it.”

“Is that why you always leave a dozen or two of the roses unpruned throughout the winter?”

The baron nodded. “You never know what story a rose might have to tell,” he said. “It might require a patient and quiet listening in order to discern the subtle message it is trying to convey. That is all the more reason I like to give growing things opportunity to share their secrets, roses most of all.”

Sabina thought of the yellow rose Matthew had given her, dried now and kept in a special place in her room, and what it spoke to her whenever she looked upon it. Her father was right—flowers did possess secrets to tell, though some of them were accompanied by their own kinds of tears.