Happy New Rose Year !

With the benign weather that we had this late Winter and early Spring, you bet we would take advantage of it.  We were at Maryann's "rose ranch" today for some rose pruning tips, the candidate rose being a healthy medium-sized shrub along the back fence.  It was a bit overgrown and needed some thinning out, but at the same time needed to retain a semblance of its original height and shape.

All things considered, it was a masterful pruning job, as you will see in the before and after photos below:

Virginia, Martha, Maryann, Anne, Craig
(BEFORE)

Martha and Maryann
(AFTER)

With a mound of clippings lying about, and with some showing some healthy new leaf buds, Maryann demonstrated how to score the bottom of a selected cutting (left photo), while three prepared cuttings (right photo) await some rooting hormone powder or planting as-is.