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| From bud to bloom, colors and stages of the rose. |
Sassy got to meet her old but young friend, Little Almost Eden - when we walked over to the nursery providentially located at the end of our cul-de-sac.
Sassy saw him riding the front end loader with his grampa, so she turned to me, as Sassy does when she wants to see someone. "You want to see him? Let's go." She trotted ahead of me and checked to make sure I was catching up, the reverse of our walks, where I Iook back to find her on the trail of another squirrel.
Little AE and I talked about Sassy's missing leg and how long he had known her. I said, "You met her two years ago and your Mom said you needed a dog. Your dad questioned that, and soon you had Opie." (Opie is the dog who puts his little muzzle in the air and howls for me to pet him.) Grampa said, "He has grown a lot." I agreed, "You are really a big boy now." Little AE grinned and stood taller.
On the way back I scanned the main rose garden for new blooms. Our nights are cold but the days are sunny and in the 70s. The long rain we had is still producing roses.
I had one group in a vase, pictured on top, and I will gather more this morning, after the sun is up. Photographs will follow - so much work. I have to put the flash drive back in the camera, get photographs with auto-lighting and auto-focus, and put the flash drive in the computer's slot again, to view and use them. I am glad for the time I spent in developing black and white photos - digital makes me thankful for the ease and quality of the photos.
Computers break everything down to 1's and 0's, binary digits or bits. The camera records photos the same way and copies the photos a bits on the computer. The Internet transmits the 1's and 0's so the designated computer can assemble them at the destination.
Matthew 537 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
But now we live in an age of deceptive language, maximum deniability, and equivocation. Krauth wrote: "Error loves ambiguities."
I have the same reaction to roses as the readers. They stun me every day with their beauty. I never get used to them. Mrs. Ichabod said, "Did you ever dream the roses would be this good?" I said, "I had something in mind, but nothing like this."
I make mistakes with too much water or too little, and some need more attention than they get. Nevertheless, the roses pop out like multi-colored fireworks - reds, oranges, pinks, purples, and whites. I keep thinking in this prolonged summer, "Cut roses and force more growth or let them finish and become dormant?" For now, I am harvesting every rose I can.
The 1's and 0's of computerdom remind me of Creation and Evolution, the two warring philosophies of our age. One or the other explains the data, gathering all the evidence and making sense of the entire file - or server farm full of files. The data is the same, but the perspective varies. In fact, the perspective can distort the data, deny the facts, and lead to bad mistakes.
My favorite rose question was found on a forum - "I am not getting many blooms. I keep using fertilizer but have no luck. My friends have stopped using fertilizer. Should I switch to their all-natural methods?" The 19th century view of fertilizer as N-P-K made the gardener think the hardware store must be right. The correct blend would give her abundant roses - the facts were starting to wear her down.
Man can pull abundant nitrogen from the atmosphere, change its composition, and make it available to plants. But blind science now realizes this approach is 19th century in origin and 20th century in folly. The 21st century reveals - through science - the fertilizing efforts of fungi, bacteria, nematodes, and protozoa. Some are starting to admit, the bags of fertilizer hurt the microbes and stunt the growth of the desirable plants.
People state, "Roses are difficult to grow," so I counter their chemical No with Creation's Yes. They could make it difficult with tillers, NPK fertilizer, and various theories of yesteryear. Our helper soaked his roses with fungicide to make black spot go away - and it did. He saw it come back again. My response, "I love fungus and want more of it. I gather rotten wood falling from trees and add it to the garden."
I make rose production easy by using the engineering genius of Creation. If the revelation of God's Creation - in Genesis 1, John 1, and many Scriptures - is true, then God's creatures will do 99+% of the work. The soil is an essential part of this Creation, and the engineering is flawless, a mechanism for growth and self-repair.
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| The base of the Crepe Myrtle bush always enjoys a healthy and nutritious layer of organic matter for the winter. Wood mulch, pine needles, and leaves will pile up to feed a soil population that will feed the roots all summer. |
