It gets in your blood. It’s like a fever. I’m talkin’ about showing roses baby, show roses. Once you get a taste you gotta have it. You go for the blue, all the way. You want it bad. You want to be “on the table.” Your heart skips a beat Continue Reading
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Love You Best, Mom
“Love You Best” was what she said. Mother made every person feel they were the person she loved best. Peonies were her favorite flower. Every year in northern Illinois in preparation for the spring bloom I would take the hand tool and cultivate around each peony bush, add peat moss Continue Reading
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Floribunda Rose Garden
The transition from USDA planting zone 7b (Lower South) to 6a (N. & Central Midwest) was a big deal for me. Plano, TX planting zone 7b, where I had over 200 roses is home to places like Dallas, Austin & San Antonio with long hot & humid summers and mild Continue Reading
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A Rose Garden, Hope Springs Eternal
Rudyard Kipling said, “Remember Gardens are not made by sitting in the shade.†However, shade sitting is never quite so satisfying as when one is contemplating the beauty of a rose garden from the prospective of being in it and having created a rose garden in the sun. Here is Continue Reading
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Rose Pruning Primer, Early Pruning post traumatic stress disorder (PPTSD)
Let us hope and pray y’all have not gotten spring fever with the deceptively warm winter, gone wild and whacked your bushes. Because if a killing frost comes along there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth if the new growth stimulated by your early pruning dies back as the Continue Reading