I was in the garden, taking in its early August glory as I went about aimlessly pinching off the dead daylilies. Although I love all flowers, daylilies hold my heart. I have perhaps thirty different colors, sizes and shapes. I wait for their blooming each year and wander most mornings to see which beauty is offering herself to me this day. Sometimes I gasp in joy at the subtleness of colors as tender petals open and curl backwards, showing me their hearts. I talk to them. I admit I do.

“Oh, you are so beautiful,” I tell them. “And you and you! You are all amazingly gorgeous.” As I admire their profuse abandon, I try not to think that tomorrow morning each of today’s perfect flowers will have folded in on itself and begun to shrivel. Tomorrow I will be pinching off the very ones that bring me such joy today. I don’t, however, linger on the thought. The daylily has no patience for such morbidity. She blooms with all her heart, perfect for a day.

As I walk, the rosebushes suddenly claim my attention. They are blooming again and, as I near, I see that in between the shimmering red clusters are heretofore unnoticed brittle, brown dead flowers. How had I missed them?

With great determination, I reach for my clippers and, as I am about to cut off the first shriveled bunch, I stop, clippers in mid air. The thought strikes me that while I mourned the prospect of the daylily’s fate, I have no such feelings for these dead roses that mar the otherwise vibrant bush. I am eager to cut them off and dump them into the compost heap. What is the difference between the lily and the rose?

Then I realize there is no difference, except from my mind’s perspective. I saw the lily as life in all its beauty and fullness. I saw the rose as death in all its withered ugliness. But what truly amazes me is that as peaceful as the lily is in her beauty, the decaying roses are peaceful in their death. Such thoughts bring me deeply into my heart and, with love and awareness, I prune away the dead roses and gently lay them in the compost.