We're trying something new this year, namely being flexibile in scheduling our monthly meetings. We'll choose a good-weather day toward the end of each month and meet outside in people's gardens in the late afternoon to early evening. There should be a good variety of rose related activities to keep us interested and busy -- yesterday being a good case in point.
We met over at Maryann's garden for a mid-Spring pruning demonstration, catching up with some rose canes that didn't quite reveal that they were dying off until now. That's Maryann in the first photo sharing the nuances of identifying what and where to prune. Her garden has a LOT of different roses and rose types, and in the second photo we "rambled" to her front yard to see how the rambling rose named 'Perennial Blue' is doing. That's it climbing up the pillar on the front porch.
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| Photo #1 April 29, 2014 |
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| Photo #2 April 29, 2014 |
Two more items of interest are shown below. The third photo shows what's left of the the floribunda rose named 'Irish Hope'. Look closely and you will see several new canes starting to emerge, so 'Irish Hope' does indeed have hope. This rose, by the way, was budded onto a rootstock rose, and is yet behaving as if it's on its own roots. Maryann always gives her roses one last chance, cutting dead canes down to the crown and hoping for the best; in this case it paid off. The fourth photo shows a couple of rose canes that really caught our eyes in the early evening sun. As it turns out, these were suckering canes from a rootstock rose, very likely from one of the varieties of Rosa canina.
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| Photo #3 April 29, 2014 |
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| Photo #4 April 29, 2014 |
