Monday, November 14, 2016

Voice Cracking, "I Like All of Them."
Today's Roses for North Arkansas Chiropractic

 Tropicana is another long-lasting rose
for arrangements.

Today we brought roses to our chiro. The receptionist is the chiro's mother-in-law, and we often speak about gardening. She really likes purple roses, so I make an effort to get one into the vases. When I pointed out her favorite color, she said, her voice cracking, "I like them all."

Most people say the same thing. I was having trouble getting good rose photos while they were still attached. I learned quickly enough that the Canon will expertly balance light and focus in close-ups in the vase. Similar casual shots on the plant are blurred from the breezes, including my attempts to make them hold still by grasping the stem.

Someone described KnockOuts as "inexpensive roses," but I paid full-price for mine. They are fast-blooming roses, fairly small, no fragrant, but enormously productive when treated right (water and prune). Most people do not prune them, which means they look like gigantic weeds most of the time.



True, KnockOuts are great for color when the roses are left on the plant, but regular pruning is the key for constant color.

Today I will gather the best KnockOuts and put them in their own vase. They have long stems and beautifully formed blooms. I have a large number of pink doubles and red doubles.

I enjoy pruning and I learned, as others have, that the number of snips increases as I do the work. I used to prune mesquite in Phoenix. A few intended prunes ended up a mountain of branches. The same is true of roses, because many death-stars (no petals left, five sepals forming a star) are lurking in the plant.



Today I am writing first and photographing the results second.

Here are some tips for rose-buying next year.



Pope John Paul II
This is a stunning white, fragrant rose on the bush, but not good for the vase. For contrast and astonishing bloomage, one can hardly beat this rose. I would pick this over KnockOuts for a hedge featuring color. The blooms are larger than KOs and will elicit oohs and ahs.

Pope John Paul II received an honorary doctorate from Notre Dame, so don't mind if I just call him Deuce.



Easy Does It
This orange rose is not pure orange but has a variety of colors in each bloom. The production is equal or better than KnockOuts. The blooms are not as long-lasting as many hybrid teas (Falling in Love, Veterans' Honor) but they are still great in the vase. These are double-duty with very strong stems, something often lacking in good roses. They are large, colorful bushes and could be used as a hedge or just in a group for fun (our future plan).

Mr. Lincoln
Insecure about roses? Nervous about your first trials? Avoid all the others and plant Mr. Lincoln. No rose I have grown is so likely to soar out of the soil and produce large, powerfully perfumed flowers that are classic from bud to fading bloom. Their turn toward blue in the vase is also fascinating.

This is one rose where a single stem can be cut with one large bloom on it. Place it in a bud vase, cut to the right length. That rose alone will fill a room with fragrance faster than any other.

Falling in Love has proven to be thorny, fragrant,
and long lasting. No other rose has so many tough thorns.

Yes and No to Roses

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.
 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.