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| Effortless harvesting, if a few small scratches are ignored. |
Rose are not quite as easy as those flowering annuals and hardy perennials that people insert into shallow holes. Designing a garden with perennials and annuals is a challenge, but the effect is great all summer.
Nevertheless, roses are quite easy and repay any extra trouble by producing valuable and valued roses for a long time.
Now that the leaves are finally falling and the colors changing in the sunny South, I can see one more reason why roses are so much fun. The normal flowers are almost done. No one prunes mums, which are losing their color and fading away. Nothing else is really colorful and healthy now - except roses. The rest have closed up for the season - Crepe Myrtle, Rose of Sharon, Hyacinths.
Roses are doing well, in spite of cold nights and light morning frosts. Roses have a long growing season. Of course, it is too easy to ask, "Would you rather have a dozen mums, a dozen daisies, or a dozen roses?"
More importantly, roses surprise us all season, from blooming one month after planting a new, bare-root plant, to those late blooming roses. The last rose of summer is difficult to leave on the bush, because the pests are largely gone, the plant is mature, and autumn rains have refreshed the summer-smitten plant.
The pink KnockOuts are fully blooming right now. I can see them from the end of the block. Closer up, Easy Does It and Veterans Honor are blooming. A Queen Elizabeth has reached six feet to produce a solo bloom.
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| I am no artist, so I let the Creator paint the landscape for me. |
Every day I am in the rose garden, I turn a corner, around the maple or in the far corner, and see a new bloom. Roses are not as thrilling as grandchildren, but they generate the same thrill of seeing something new and different, something so good that it has to be shared with someone.
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| A KnockOut double red blooms fast and fades fast, but lacks nothing in beauty. |
For instance, when Team Jackson grilled on my birthday, we had delicious home-made cheesecake instead of ice cream. On the way out the door, grandson Alex said quietly to me, "Will we have ice cream next time?" I am still chuckling about that, one month later. Mrs. Ichabod will hear it several times more and add her mini-conversations.
Roses power through mistakes I have made. I will give up on one that seems to have been neglected too long. Then it comes back with a perfect flower. One rose in a bud vase will trump any other solo flower.
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| Fragrant Cloud is like incense in the chapel. |
