I owe the phrase of this title to my friend the Rev. Kathy Guin. Sometimes, others can see so much better than I can, even when I know that I see something. Sometimes it is through the eyes of others that we actually can see what we are doing, and a little bit about why we do it. I was just surprised by the presence of a light, dainty, pink rose after weeks of a Washington-style heat wave.

I mean, I was only able to write, “As the hottest stretch of summer continues, all over the neighborhood, the roses have decided to bloom again…this little one is mine, on a bush that I mostly ignore. And yet, there it is.”

I have noticed, as time has passed and I take fewer and fewer pictures on my morning walks, that the things that draw my attention are the tiny things, the things that seem just a little, well, out of place in their city surroundings. And nothing seemed more out of place than rose blossoms festooning a crinkly, water-hungry rose bush in a scraggly garden on a day when the temperature was already 83 degrees at 6:00 a.m. in the morning. Unexpected, indeed.