52 Week Project - Week 37

*Just as a reminder, this is a personal project I am undertaking this year, in order to shoot more and share more. Each week of 2011 will have a corresponding favorite photograph; snapshots from my life.

I love roses, the way they look and the way they smell. The most perfect of flowers. Yes they can grow in many, many places, but they remind me of my home country. An English Rose, a country garden, tea with scones and clotted cream (sigh).

I appreciate Anne Bronte's sentiment, that often with beauty there will come sacrifice, hard work, maybe even pain. We should not expect for everything to be easy and beautiful. It is not a right, or a foregone conclusion. Beauty must be protected, treasured, fought for. How often we yearn for life to be easier, whatever that may mean, at any time. Yet are we prepared for the thorns that will accompany? We need to embrace the hardships, the struggles and difficulties and then we will truly see the beauty that is already before us and value it all the more.