Lovelly Melissa, you really do express an appreciation of beauty and feeling for your garden, I sometimes feel what you've so elequently expressed myself; and my first thought in reading your message was of fairies that live in secret garden places discrete from human eyes. It reminded of a poem I once wrote about fairies in my garden but, well, poems are sensitive thoughts.
Lovelly, Melissa, thanks.

Bill

I like your post, too, Melissa.I think I should be more contemplative about my own garden at times; I get so obsessive-compulsive! I was wondering how the beetle situation was for you this year. For me, I think those pherormone traps may be helping (keeping fingers, toes, arms and legs crossed...)March was an awful month for me; I was so scared over the drought, but thank Heaven it started to rain in April and this year-finally-we are having a real SPRING. My roses are really nice, too, especially considering said drought and the fact that, what with getting water and mulch ,I had no time to fertilize in March, and have only recently finished doing so!I'm especially interested to hear aboput your once-bloomers; I have been reluctant to try these, for fear that they might not bloom well since they do need cold to flourish, and I worry that maybe here it doesn't get cold enough. But hearing your report, I am encouraged...Just got 7 new on-sale roses from Nino Sanremo, and have to plant'em out, since they look quite tired of being in their pots. Apparently the risk of an emergency situation re water here in Tuscany has not been annulled yet, though things are better, but at least my garden has been saved, and hopefully we will continue to get good rain. Happy trails! bart

Beautifully written, Melissa!

The last few days have been too hot to work in the garden in the afternoon, so I have been sitting on the deck, under the oak tree, reading and just enjoying the garden--which is something I rarely do. Yesterday a couple of ladies from the garden club came by to see the roses, tho they are well past their prime flush now. They kept saying how beautiful it was. I tried to see it from their eyes. Mostly, I see the weeds to be pulled, the grass to be cut, the deadwood, the weaklings, the blackspot. But it really is beautiful and I am rather proud of myself.

Melissa. I can see why you'd want to live in your garden with hundreds of blooming, fragrant roses. You express your feelings so well and your drawing skills must be excellent, too. I on the other hand would and do rely on my camera for recording roses - known and unknown. Makes life so much easier since I can barely draw stick figures. I labored hard this weekend, but I got the work done - deadheading, clean-up, alfalfa tea and composted chicken manure distributed, and Sunn Hemp seeds planted. Now I await the fruit. I'll be bent over looking for sprouts and holding my breath. A tropical storm is upon us, but I am on the less wet side of it, only got .45" of rain last night. Hopefully, there is more to come. I wish you could figure a way to get those scents into your posts, Melissa. Then they would truly be divine.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

Rose season is when I receive my reward. The labor here is huge and the reward is huge. I often become lost in a dreamworld of beauty. It's also an intense time of socializing for me. There are events and parties. People come here during peak bloom at an amazing rate. The whole time I'm working away. All of us here wait for this time and strive towards it. I think roses are magical beings.

Melissa, the only thing missing from that beautiful post is pictures! I really appreciate all your descriptions and the emotional connection you have with your roses!

Is anyone really ever done in the garden?

I don't mean the maintenance, but the planting, shifting, design, additions, subtractions..etc

We have spent about 6 years cleaning up the garden, getting down to the last of the things on the clean up list. There are many things to spend some money on to upgrade, a few more trees and plants I want (not just roses-sorry)

But, it sure is nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel on the clean up!

{{gwi:258336}}
Jerome. I, too, live and garden in a climate really too warm and humid for rose cultivation but still I try. After some experimentation (I live and garden in US zone 9.5 to 10 - almost sub-tropical) I had quiet good results from some of the Meiland roses, particularly the one obove, 'Seduction'. Until the shade of a Poinciana tree took away much of their dayly sun, I was dead-heading a wheel barrow full of flowers from 8 bushes weekly. Also some of the more hardy, warm tolerant, David Austins are good, along with the 'Cherokee' Rose, Rosa Lavigata, though that is a bit vigorous. The 'flower carpet' varieties, hardy ground cover-cum-climbers, are also worth a try; my two are mostly disease resistant and flower all spring, summer and autumn.

Bill, Bart, Catsrose, Sherry, Pam, Auntlavender, Kippy, Jerome,
I'm glad you all liked this, and that you wrote to say so. Communication is precious! Bill, so are poems, the spring water of the soul. Bart, beetles have been pretty bad here, but not as awful as last spring; the "cetonielle" (smaller black ones with white dots) are somewhat fewer, but the population of "cetonie" (green-gold and bigger) seems to have grown. This spring has turned out a lot better than a person would have thought, hasn't it? Some of my Gallicas in particular have had big full blooms such as come only during a good season. About the once-blooming roses, my guess is that you can grow them. Do apples and cherries grow in your area? Tulips and daffodils? All these need winter chill. Here we had some extremely warm winters back around 2005-06, I believe it was, and I worried that there weren't enough chill hours for the plants that needed them, but everything bloomed just fine. I have the highest opinion of these roses, and find they're perfectly suited to my climate, and I suspect to yours as well. Perhaps I should add that a really hot dry spot doesn't suit most of them...well, perhaps the Albas and the Damasks.
Funny, I feel guilty when I sit down and just enjoy the sight of my garden, but isn't that what it's there for?
Hear, hear, Catsrose. Definitely keep on being proud of your garden and enjoy your visitors' enjoyment.
Sherry, I don't draw well, my little sketches grow out of determination and nothing more, though I do enjoy the manuality of them. I need to learn to use a camera. I admire the many examples of good photography I see here and am aware it would be a hugely useful tool for me, but I haven't applied myself to the task of learning.
Pam, your rose season sounds wonderful, and a most well-deserved payment for your labors. I think it's marvelous that you offer so many people the memorable experience of being in your garden.
Kippy, I bet you already know that you're never done. But it sounds like you're getting close to a kind of gardening that's less chores and more play and enjoyment and experimentation.
Jerome, I read Thomas's book early on in my rose growing career and agree that it's a book that promotes dreams. I still have it on my shelf. The sobriety of his style makes it all the more effective in communicating his love for these rare, lost roses and in describing their charm.
Did you ever look into the Hybrid Chinas? These are--I read--once-blooming crosses between China and once-flowering old roses that look a lot like their once-blooming parents but are more tolerant of lack of winter chill. I'm getting this from the Vintage Rose Book. The Hybrid Chinas include highly desirable varieties like 'Duchesse d'Angouleme', 'Hippolyte', and 'Juno', all of them having to my eyes a convincing old rose air. If you're interested you could inquire on the forum and see what gardeners who have conditions similar to yours have to say about them.
Melissa

I really like to hear how others appreciate all the work that goes into gardening. When I'm working in the garden, no matter what, I never feel that it's work. It just feels good. I recently told a friend that I enjoyed the work of putting plants in more than the flowers themselves, now this may be an exaggeration, but it is very close to true.

A briefer rose season is perhaps more cherished. Here where the growing season is 362 days per year, I get a more than a little spoiled.

Ah Melissa, it is always so devine to see you put in words things that I didn't think could be. "Drawing in the garden through the very pores of my skin" is so perfect ... it is exactly what I feel now that you articulate it, but could have never said so myself. Pure poetry, as is the garden.

It interests me that you are letting the annual grass grow in your beds. Please elaborate? Because you are giving up trying to keep it under control, or because you like the way it looks? I have many different variations of wild bermuda grasses growing in and around my roses, and up until now I have been fairly diligent about trying to keep it under control. It feels like a losing battle, and in some areas I have done what you are doing - cutting it back with sheers, and letting it go where it wants. So far the roses don't seem any worse for it - I'm conscientious about adding extra manure mulch and fertilizer to them, and they see to be living in harmony. But I fear that that may not be the case as the bermuda gets denser and denser as it tends to do.

Thanks, Harmony, I'm glad you liked that--so did I. My writing and gardening are both attempts at creative expression, and it's a satisfaction when I get them right.
About the grass. The critical word is "annual". I allow annual grass to grow in the beds but weed out the perennial stuff, and what we call Bermuda grass here is perennial and invasive: I weed it and mulch it and grow dense shrubs that shade it out. It's hard (impossible) to get rid of, though it can be kept to a low level of obnoxiousness.
The theory behind my letting grass grow among the flowers (along with wild peas and vetch, geraniums, spurge, and other annuals) is that it's an in-place, self-supplying mulch. My soil is heavy clay, evidently nutrient-rich but poor in organic matter. Annual plants manufacture organic material, shade the soil as mulch, loosen and enrich it with their roots (I don't have to dig it in!), and add a layer of humus as they decompose. This might not work in a garden with soil poor in nutrients, but so far it looks promising here. As far as looks are concerned, the garden is out in the middle of the country and the meadow look of the grass and other annuals in the beds, combined with the mowed paths, is rather handsome, at least until the grass reaches maturity and collapses all over the place. I spend a lot of time cutting grass with shears (and leaving it in place as mulch), but that's about all the maintenance I do this time of year. The grass can also overwhelm small plants.
In nature land goes through phases of vegetation, passing from bare soil to weeds to grass to brush to forest, this if there's no major intervention. The garden started as a quite scrubby poor field and is now rather richer meadow. The roses are happy--they're often colonizing shrubs in nature--but most of the trees and other shrubs are still growing slowly and getting established. I hope that when they take hold that they'll begin to nourish the garden with their detritus of leaves and dead twigs, and shade out some of the grass so I don't have so much of it to cut. But for now I'm glad the grass is feeding the soil.
Melissa

Auntlavender, I don't remember meeting you on the forum before now and just wanted to say hello to you, and pleased to meet you! I don't always love working in the garden, when I'm hot and risking sunburn and the bugs are buzzing around. But I can't imagine having a garden I didn't work in; what would be the point? I have a garden in order to do gardening. You too sound like you have a very happy relationship with your plants.
Melissa

I truly love the description of your garden Melissa. It's as if I'm tip-toeing in a secret garden.

Kasie

Melissa, I loved the description of your garden and the time you spend there. I'm glad you've had such a splendid time with the sights and sounds and smells.

I've been so busy during May that any time outside tending I felt was being stolen from something else I should be doing. But it's June now and I'm somewhat free of a lot of other obligations, which I enjoy - don't get me wrong - but it's not the same kind of enjoyment as being in a garden.

Gardening and tending roses to someone walking seeing me by no doubt elicits a "my she's a hard worker" or "my, she's virtuous; she could be shopping or having lunch with the girls." But inside myself, I know the work is more akin to the joy of wriggling your toes in warm sand or reading a good book on a rainy day or the sun on your face. Bliss, me and the roses.