Perhaps I should clarify: it's the ups and downs of rose gardening that I'm mulling over right now. I am not thinking about other ups and downs in life. I rarely think about those unless I cannot avoid it.
When I took on this project of creating a mixed rose garden -- meaning there is a special garden for roses but not only roses, it was with the belief that I could do it organically. If you treat rose disease with pesticides, you're killing off beneficial insects. If you spray on fungicides, and I mean broad spectrum, the environmental concerns mount: you're introducing toxins to the pollen, you're disrupting the mycelium networks in the soil, you're allowing rain to wash off the chemicals and have them suddenly appear in the steams and lakes. You can, instead, implement methods with zero environmental impact -- planting and pruning carefully, watering at the base, removing and trashing affected leaves. If a plant is heavily impacted (by bugs or fungi), you can use targeted organic products, spraying only leaves, only in the morning, and only affected areas. That's pretty close to zero impact as well. These then are my tools. Not a single harsh chemical spray can be found on my gardening shelf.
This, of course, does not make me a purist. I buy roses. They may be treated respectfully in my yard, but they for sure were sprayed before coming here. Commercial growers have to use broad spectrum applications. I dont know that any seller can grow roses organically. It's too labor intensive -- they'd never make any money on their plants.
And that's my point here: an environmentally friendly approach is so labor intensive! By the time I am done with garden work this year, I will have 111 roses in the ground and another 9 in pots (those will overwinter in the garage). If you think me snipping spent lilies was ridiculously time consuming, well now! Monitoring roses is a whole 'nother level of effort. 95% of my roses are exceptionally disease resistant (the 5% that are not, were purchased before I knew enough to avoid them, and even those are moderately disease resistant). And if you want to grow roses organically, you should only buy those with an excellent history of not succumbing to black spot or fungi. But of course, that does not mean they will never succumb to disease. A rose is a rose is a rose. I haven't put down drip hoses this year and so I've had to water them with a hose, inevitably splashing some of the leaves. A real no-no for rosarians. It was a hot summer. Often times the more mature roses were heavily branched and I did not know to clip them for better air flow. And of course, we are now at the end of the season and black spot is really a big issue in the fall.
I have a large sack in the garage where I throw in spotted leaves and that sack always fills by the end of the week (it cannot be composted -- this is garbage can stuff). And here's another painful (literally) reality: I walk by, I see the spotted leaves, I want to snip them off of course. Chances are high that I am not then wearing rose gloves. Do you know how many bloody thorn pricks I get each day? My hands are tingling as I speak. And this continues from May through November. Every day, check the roses, snip off anything that is unhealthy. Ouch!
And you know what? I don't hate this work. Somehow it is deeply satisfying. And actually better than lily snipping because I dont work in a field of mosquitoes. I can deal with the thorns, just keep those awful disease carrying bugs away from me!
Roses still blooming today:
(Freda Kahlo rose: one of my earliest acquisitions, before I went in the direction of pastels...)
(Sitting Pretty rose)
(my first Carding Mill rose went into Millie's yard...)
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Our morning walk...
(an obelisk and a hole: waiting for Dee-Lish rose)
Breakfast, snuggly with Millie who brings her dinosaur to the table, on a cloudy day.
Even though her favorite toy is this puppy -- he once had a heart, and a heartbeat, and stuffing. Not anymore. She still loves him.
I mentioned in an earlier post that Ed got a new car. A new old car. (The price -- $1600 -- says it all.) He tells me he enjoys working on it because it lived in the south and so the belly of it is completely without rust. He'd like to keep it that way, but he claims that all those underside rust proofings offered by garages and dealers are a scam. Totally ineffective. However, he does see hope in a product that is rarely seen here -- lanolin. Sheep's wax. There is one guy in the next town who will apply that. Could I drive with him there so that he could leave his car with him?
(Ed, you do not need to bring Henny with you...)
On the way back, we catch up. And I think to myself -- wow, after we've shared news and stories, we are back on the same platform where we perched last fall, when I decided to shake things up a bit by moving. I'm glad I moved, I am happy where I landed, but damn it, couldn't we have stepped forward? Or have we, and I am just not seeing it?
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Millie's joy when I return home is so heart warming! she dances on her hind two legs all around me and I know I should discourage that because it's not what polite dogs too, but gee, she is just 17.5 pounds in weight. Couldn't hurt a fly!
I take her for a zoomie spin in her yard.
Then indulge her in a solid barking session at the window...
And finally, settle in for a good long brushing of her thick thick fur.
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I am back to kid pickup duty, but Wednesday is always a free day and so I stay home and give myself those precious moments of deliberation and contemplation. Ups and downs of rose growing, ups and downs of life. Groan if you want (I know a banality when I see one!), but it sure seems that life tracks rose growing. Or is it the other way around?
with so much love...
