Coming Up Roses
When I went to cognitive behavioral therapy a few years ago I learned some very important things. 1) You're the best one suited to figure out what's important for your own mental health, no one else can decide that for you. 2) whatever activities you find calming, provided they cause no harm to yourself or others (with emphasis on others), you should be sure to keep those activities in your life.At the time I didn't find much that was calming. All of my sewing and crafting projects were in a constant state of suspended motion (there were always tons of them incomplete which I found very stressful), I had an eighteen month old very mobile challenging boy, a house in need of lots of repairs, depression had already sunk in for a very nice long run of two years solid, and panic attacks woke me up many mornings. The one thing, I told my therapist, that I found calming was to go hang out with my roses. I enjoyed pruning them and gathering them to arrange in vases. When I would bring them into the house and place them in various rooms, I could be really stressed and then see them, stop to smell them (most of them had strong scent) and although they didn't have the power to erase all the panic, I could feel everything in my chest settle down a little. The world would get a little bit more quiet.
So my therapist suggested I make sure to spend time everyday cultivating this relationship with my plants. I don't really know what it is about roses, I never intended to fall for them, that's for sure. It was accidental. The way you can take in a stray cat because you are a caring person and not really love cats, but over time the cat's charm gets under your skin and you find it hard to give away. In the first house we ever owned we inherited a few incredibly abused rose bushes. The previous owner had pruned them with a weed whacker.
I felt sorry for them. I intended to plant herbs and vegetables and some wild flowers and daisies, but not roses. I always thought of roses as fussy and kind of over-rated. Philip and I started to prune the roses back to a healthy shape and as we did we got more flowers from them until we found ourselves being thanked by these sad roses in a profusion of gorgeous bouquets which we both found incredibly satisfying to arrange and put in our house. We became so enamored with them that in our next place we planted over thirty different bushes, which as any rose growers know, is hardly any at all.
My roses never look perfect. You can fuss over roses quite a bit if you want prize winning blooms with no hint of disease. That's not my style at all. Roses are surprisingly hardy if you don't mind some rust, black spot, and mildew here and there. You don't even have to spray with anything more than dormant oil (nontoxic) to get good results. You'll have some of all of their known issues, but none of the rose diseases will kill them if kept in check by giving the plants healthy growing conditions and picking off black spot leaves when you see them. If a rose becomes overcome with problems you have but to take a little care and it will come back.
In this house we have probably close to thirty roses but only four of them are ones we've chosen ourselves. All of the other ones were already here. Which is really exciting, but also means that I don't know what some of them are (I've figured out a few of them though, I'm a pretty good rose sleuth) and unfortunately almost none of them have any scent at all. Scent is a huge criteria for choosing rose varieties in our house. Part of the enjoyment for us in growing roses is the sensual ritual of walking the rose beds sniffing at the opening blooms. I think the scent has a lot to do with the calming qualities I find in rose growing.
Because of the store, my garden has been tremendously neglected. I don't mind the weeds going nuts as much as I mind that the roses have gone untended. I only got one bed pruned at all this winter and since then it has gone through it's first flush and because it was never dead headed, it has had only meager blooms since then and the bushes have gotten scraggly looking. I mind that a lot. I don't care much what the neighbors think of my dead lawn, my weeds, or anything else about my yard. I don't garden to impress others. But when I look at my roses everyday while watering the vegetable garden I long to go and snip and clean up, dead head, and talk to them.
Yes, I said I TALK TO THEM. I know that most passionate gardeners do this too. I have put in some good time in the studio. It's in working order now, though not finished. So today I plunked my kid in front of a movie (after he declined to join me outside) and went out front to prune the "Hot Spot" roses. I have four of them. The roses are hot hot pink and have almost no scent at all unless put together in a huge mass of blooms. They're very pretty, especially when paired with my orange german roses (can't remember it's name) which grow on the other side of the front yard. It's hot out there. But I pruned all four of them. They desperately need a big soaking so later on I plan to get a big hose at the farm store (with Max on the scooter! Should be fun!) so I can reach them with the sprinkler and soak those bushes for hours.
It feels so good. They attacked me quite seriously, but I don't blame them. Next after soaking them is cleaning up the weedy bed they're in. I have room to plant my two potted roses (a Mr. Lincoln and a Peace rose) so I want to plant those two roses and then plant some rudebekia and more daisies (there's a daisy volunteer there that popped up this spring to my delight) and possibly some more lavender.
I have lots of room to cut out more space for roses along the whole edge of my lawns. Some roses I have had and miss and will get again are:
Peter Mayle
Frederick Mistral
Madame Isaac Perriere
Oklahoma
Ingrid Bergman (sadly not too fragrant)
Abraham Darby
New Dawn
Apothecary's Rose
Honor
I think I'll ask for them for Christmas and my birthday. In all the hubbub of life I nearly forgot how much I get out of my roses. In spite of the heat I had good conversations with the Hot Spots and they look so much better now. In spite of neglect this past winter, they all have at least one or two brand new thick canes. Are any of you big rose fans and what are your favorites and why? Talk to me about them because I miss my friend Sharon who loves roses as much as I do.
My roses never look perfect. You can fuss over roses quite a bit if you want prize winning blooms with no hint of disease. That's not my style at all. Roses are surprisingly hardy if you don't mind some rust, black spot, and mildew here and there. You don't even have to spray with anything more than dormant oil (nontoxic) to get good results. You'll have some of all of their known issues, but none of the rose diseases will kill them if kept in check by giving the plants healthy growing conditions and picking off black spot leaves when you see them. If a rose becomes overcome with problems you have but to take a little care and it will come back.
In this house we have probably close to thirty roses but only four of them are ones we've chosen ourselves. All of the other ones were already here. Which is really exciting, but also means that I don't know what some of them are (I've figured out a few of them though, I'm a pretty good rose sleuth) and unfortunately almost none of them have any scent at all. Scent is a huge criteria for choosing rose varieties in our house. Part of the enjoyment for us in growing roses is the sensual ritual of walking the rose beds sniffing at the opening blooms. I think the scent has a lot to do with the calming qualities I find in rose growing.
Because of the store, my garden has been tremendously neglected. I don't mind the weeds going nuts as much as I mind that the roses have gone untended. I only got one bed pruned at all this winter and since then it has gone through it's first flush and because it was never dead headed, it has had only meager blooms since then and the bushes have gotten scraggly looking. I mind that a lot. I don't care much what the neighbors think of my dead lawn, my weeds, or anything else about my yard. I don't garden to impress others. But when I look at my roses everyday while watering the vegetable garden I long to go and snip and clean up, dead head, and talk to them.
Yes, I said I TALK TO THEM. I know that most passionate gardeners do this too. I have put in some good time in the studio. It's in working order now, though not finished. So today I plunked my kid in front of a movie (after he declined to join me outside) and went out front to prune the "Hot Spot" roses. I have four of them. The roses are hot hot pink and have almost no scent at all unless put together in a huge mass of blooms. They're very pretty, especially when paired with my orange german roses (can't remember it's name) which grow on the other side of the front yard. It's hot out there. But I pruned all four of them. They desperately need a big soaking so later on I plan to get a big hose at the farm store (with Max on the scooter! Should be fun!) so I can reach them with the sprinkler and soak those bushes for hours.
It feels so good. They attacked me quite seriously, but I don't blame them. Next after soaking them is cleaning up the weedy bed they're in. I have room to plant my two potted roses (a Mr. Lincoln and a Peace rose) so I want to plant those two roses and then plant some rudebekia and more daisies (there's a daisy volunteer there that popped up this spring to my delight) and possibly some more lavender.
I have lots of room to cut out more space for roses along the whole edge of my lawns. Some roses I have had and miss and will get again are:
Peter Mayle
Frederick Mistral
Madame Isaac Perriere
Oklahoma
Ingrid Bergman (sadly not too fragrant)
Abraham Darby
New Dawn
Apothecary's Rose
Honor
I think I'll ask for them for Christmas and my birthday. In all the hubbub of life I nearly forgot how much I get out of my roses. In spite of the heat I had good conversations with the Hot Spots and they look so much better now. In spite of neglect this past winter, they all have at least one or two brand new thick canes. Are any of you big rose fans and what are your favorites and why? Talk to me about them because I miss my friend Sharon who loves roses as much as I do.