The Days of wine and Roses

      I can’t say about the wine, but it certainly is the day (or maybe the year) for roses.

     I have never planted a rose.  They are not my favorite flower.  “A thorn with every rose,” the saying goes.  In my experience, there are dozens of thorns for every rose.  Try to do a rose bush a favor by removing some of the weeds around it.  You will be rewarded with scratches a-plenty.

     All my roses are  inherited.  A former owner of the Loveland house must have loved roses.  In our small yard are nearly 20 rose bushes.

     Two years ago, I thought it a shame that the riot of roses in the backyard was appreciated by nearly no one.  In the front yard, on the sunny side of the garage were some vines that clambered near to the garage eaves every summer.  Since they didn’t bloom in the first or second year we lived here, I decided they should go and I would thin the backyard roses by transplanting three of the biggest rose bushes to the front yard on the sunny side of the garage.

     I dugout the existing garage plants.  I made big holes for the new residents.  Somewhere in a tree-planting catalog, I read that you should dig a $100 hole for a $10 tree.  I thought that should work for roses, too.

      Digging up the roses was more difficult, since I needed to preserve as much of the root ball as possible.  And, of course, there were the thorns to deal with.  I got the job done.  I wondered if the bushes would grow at all after the shock they had been through.

     They did grow, and pretty well, too.  But nary a bloom did they produce the first year.  I was calling on a neuro-kinesiologist who was also a rose-raiser.  She said they might never bloom, probably because I hadn’t taken enough of the root ball.

    I stuck with them for another year.  They put out a few blooms low, then gave it up.  But the vines grew six feet or higher.  So I gave them another chance.  This year, they produced.

      Speaking of weird plants, take a look at this asparagus stalk:

     It started out as Siamese twin shoots.  Coming through the soil, it looked like a double barrel shotgun barrel.  I refrained from cutting it.  It grew big.  What will it be like a year from now?

      Asparagus season is over for this year.   I guess I will have to learn how to trim roses whose blooms have faded and fallen.

      Maybe I’ll check out the wine, first.