Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Is there such a thing as "too many roses"??


After weeks and weeks of steady rain, I was so excited to wake up to warm beautiful sun spilling into our bedroom on Sunday morning. We enjoyed a wonderful morning of fellowship with fellow believers at our local church. Afterwards, my boys were begging to take a walk through the neighborhood, so that's just what we did. We had a lovely walk, stopping to pet curious kitties, chatting with neighbors as they worked in their yards and enjoying the beauty of the day!
When we got home, I decided Superbowl or not, the day was too pretty to spend it inside! Instead, the boys and I changed into work clothes and out we went to spend the afternoon working and playing in the yard.
A few years ago I discovered how simple it was to start roses. So every year after I prune my roses, I take the clippings and put them in the ground. Within a few months, my efforts are rewarded with tiny leaves all over the once bare sticks! It's always so exciting! By summer I even have blooms on many of my new plants. I keep them in their little bedding area, a special place in the yard that I've designated as my new plant "nursery". I leave them in the "nursery" for one year, then I transplant them in the yard, in order to make room for new clippings. I transplanted 136 new rose bushes on Sunday. Oh my aching back!!
I realized that with this new addition of bushes, I now have 298 bushes... um... okay, so the thought did cross my mind that perhaps there really is such a thing as "too many roses"... how depressing!!! I even came in and asked my husband if maybe I shouldn't start anymore new bushes this year... but I knew even as I asked him that I would indeed be starting a whole new generation of rose bushes, as I can't bring myself to toss any of my rose clippings into the "green" recycle bin. It was in realizing this that it occured to me that perhaps I have an addiction... are there others out there with the same addiction? Do they have support groups for people such as myself?? Rose Growers Anonymous perhaps?? And the terrible part in all of this, the more roses I grow, the more I have to prune, the more clippings I get, the more roses I grow... HELP!!
I told my husband that maybe I should at the very least learn to propagate other things, so that we'd have a little bit of diversity in our yard. Happily, he actually encourages my strange rose addiction. I think he is thinking one of these days when there is no more space to keep them, they will end up at the farmer's market. =) Until then... happy clipping!!