Roses are fussy & we have a heavy clay soil. The kids were sent scrounging the yard for every broken brick they could find to create a suitable drainage base & we bought in piles of rich organic compost soil & spent a fortune on rose bushes.
Jossie has long since flown the coop & on the southern side of the house we have a sadly bedraggled & neglected rose bed. I don't like thorny things & roses, particularly the sort worth having because they have a rich, heady scent, have thorns. The more exotic bushes promptly curled up their toes & carked it under my tender ministrations. Most of the rest reverted to their uninteresting root stock. What remains throws long, long tendrils above the clothesline wire & on the ends, where the thorns cluster fiercest deep red buds glisten like jewels.
Yesterday I gathered handfuls of tightly curled buds & brought them inside before the wind & the rain shredded them to tatters. This morning the half~opened buds fill the house with scent. Tomorrow, full blown, their glory spent, their petals will fall but there are more, hidden & small, growing scretly to scented delight.
6 comments:
Regardless of their origins they are beautiful.
Ruby (who cannot seem to comment here under my profile and lost my longer comment.)
I always wondered why roses growing wild in the gardens of old run down homes are big and healthy, whilst mine are so fussy and don't flower that well. It would appear that roses that are neglected do better so I try and neglect mine to, but so far, they haven't improved!!!! Perhaps old fashion roses are tougher than these modern ones.
I miss the gardenia bush I had in Florida. The closest thing in scent I can grow here is jasmine.
I like roses but mostly the ones that do well on their own with just some watering as needed. I am not that proficient in gardening, but I am working on that.
Well....a rose ...is arose...is a rose..etc.!
but I see that one of your followers is having the same trouble as me, can't leave a comment on some blogs and have to identify myself on my own.
Yes I am who I am! at least I was who I was who I was until blogger stopped me!
I have never been able to grow much of anything.... sigh... I do have one very very old rose bush, so old and established that evn *I* can't kill it;-} I think it might be even as old as the house. (Do roses grow for a hundred years?) It grew so heavy that it pulled the arbor right out by the nails. So last year it was pruned down to within an inch of its very life by an (in my opinion) overly exuberant friend. It's doing great now and should bloom in a few weeks. I can't wait.
:0) Beautiful post. I can just imagine those roses unfurling their petals and fragrance x
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