Roses...

[bleedseason]

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would not think that my rose looked like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under a glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except for the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."
-from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery