Springing Back to the Rose Garden

How I love this time of year! We've had our windows open for three or four weeks straight, and I am a happy woman.

Spring started right after the snow left a few weeks ago--that was fun and unusual! As soon as it warmed up, I took the opportunity to get outside and do a little gardening.

I wasn't sure I remembered how to do a little gardening, though. The last couple of years, we've pretty much abandoned that activity in favor of other pastimes (the babies won't be little forever, after all). My poor rose garden looked so unloved. But this month I've already planted six new roses, cleaned up the weeds, done most of my pruning, and put out pine straw.

Pruning is easy to put off, but to my surprise, I even enjoyed that. It seems that being out in the fresh air when it's a gorgeous 72 degrees, dreaming about the beautiful, fragrant blooms in your future, is restorative and healing. All the noise in the world fades away, and you simply enjoy the meditative quiet.

I love everything about roses--their beauty, their fragrance, and even the way the petals feel to the touch. And I found some purportedly disease-resistant varieties that I hope will make the summer a little less taxing.

I still have three more new roses on the way, and these are coming all the way from a company called Palatine Roses in Canada (I caught them right at the end of their shipping season)! These three are among the newer varieties from German breeder Kordes. One is a climber called Aloha Hawaii--which is fun, since I was born in Honolulu-- and I've also selected a pair of roses named Caramel Fairy Tale to go in the pretty pots that Hood Ornament gave us.

Wish me luck! There will be plenty of photos.

Dirty Jobs

One of our favorite features of our home is our pond. Actually, we have two ponds—a small upper pond and a large lower one with koi swimming in it. It’s so relaxing to sit out on the patio with a good book, listening to the waterfalls bubbling nearby.

Of course, every home amenity comes with a responsibility. I was the one who wanted a swimming pool, so I take care of the pool. And, once a year or so, DH gets to clean out the ponds and cut back any overgrown foliage. This is a relatively brief but very messy job. Actually, that doesn’t do it justice--today, he could have been on that Discovery Channel program called Dirty Jobs.

Suffice it to say there will be no photographs of this particular activity. No one sees us this dirty but each other.

The large pond wasn't bad--DH hacked away at an overgrown plant and handed chunks of it to me while he stood in hip-deep water. But when he got into the small upper pond, which had heavier mucky debris in it, he had to heave that wet, heavy goops into the wheelbarrow next to the pond. After one of those tosses, the wheelbarrow tipped over.

DH: Oops! Can you tilt that wheelbarrow back up?
TS: No.
DH: Could you try?
TS: Sure. Okay, no.
DH: Well, you have to admit that was a half-hearted effort.
TS: Sweetie, you’re thinking I have upper body strength like a man. Look at these little arms.
DH: Well . . .
TS: I’ve told you before, you should have married a woman with a big strong back, somebody like my great-grandmother Clarissa Joiner.
DH: Who?
TS: You remember her—we have that ancient picture of her. She rode on horseback from Louisiana to South Carolina while pregnant with her first of twelve children. She looked like a man. You should have married someone like that.
DH: I like being married to you better.
TS: That’s the right answer.

Charlie Brown Tomatoes

Our tomato plants came in today! I'm so excited.

I always feel a little like Charlie Brown kicking the football at this time of year. DH and I get our hopes up for a great crop of tasty tomatoes, and then, just like last year, Lucy moves the football, i.e., something goes wrong and we are disappointed again.

The past couple of years were the worst. We tried growing tomatoes in those upside-down planters. As soon as we planted our beautiful tomato plants in those planters, they began looking sick. I don't know if we accidentally raised the plants out of the direct sun, or we had a fungus among us, or what. Now, a tomato expert in our area says that his brother grows them in upside-down buckets, and they do very well, so I don't know what our problem was with that.

DH even built a mesh-enclosed structure to keep the birds out. I still donate a tomato to the birds every now and then, but they don't get all of them.

In previous years, we have grown some tomatoes that we figure cost approximately $75 per tomato--no small feat. I'm not sure if they were actually worth $75 apiece, but they were yummy.

This year, we're going back to the Earth Boxes . . . . . we have many, many Earth Boxes. I have a fungicide recommended by the tomato expert, and The Roomie accidentally mentioned to me that she's a Master Gardener, so I have plans for her, too.

She'll have her hands full; our problems growing tomatoes are legend. Wish us good luck . . . and please don't touch that football.