The Haunted Rose Bushes

In Oscar Wildes' The Canterville Ghost, the spirit of Sir Simon haunted his old castle and refused to let a stained puddle of blood get cleaned up by anyone for centuries. I feel like we, too, have a not so gruesome but similar situation at our condo. Our condominium HOA is mostly ruled by geriatrics. The former owner who lived in our condo was also a geriatric who had no taste. She was a widow that loved ugly wall paper and rose bushes. I am a sick freak and I hate rose bushes. I had a "scarred” youth of mowing tons of old fogies' yards and getting poked and scraped by rose bushes and other harmful shrubberies. Apparently fogies and thorny bushes go together.

When we first moved into our condo, I was excited to make some renovations starting with removing those annoying rose bushes. I spent a whole week end pulling them out, some with gloved hands which didn’t protect me and some with my truck and a chain. That was  a painful ordeal and I eventually got the bleeding to stop. Not long after this event took place we heard rumors that the former owner of our condo died. My wife said, “Now we can totally change things and not feel guilty.”

The following summer I discovered that all of those lethal ugly rose bushes grew back! Once again I furiously pulled and now dug deep into the ground to make sure that there is no trace of roots left behind, which I'm sure I had done the first time. The following summer they grew back again, and so on for every following year. I am dumbfounded by this. When I deliberately try to plant something in the yard it either dies or takes forever to grow.

Do you think my flower beds and condo are haunted by the former owner? Of course, that would explain the eerie sounds of Lawrence Welk coming from our basement.