This is the beginning of the season for roses. I smile every time I look into the garden (which I do a lot as my window for writing looks out onto it). The tea roses are gorgeous. One though we lost this year to its sturdier root stock. Another one of those has become a climber that goes to the top of a nearby pine tree.
All in all, though old fashioned roses only bloom this once, I especially those like the musk and damask where their history goes into antiquity. And their fragrance during their time in the sun must be experienced as words don't do it justice. Tea roses are beautiful, but they simply cannot match that rich fragrance of those old beauties.
9 comments:
My hubby tends to our antique roses, but this year they are really sparce. I think we have had too much rain for them.
Your roses are beautiful! Spring is such a wonderful time of the year.
Linda, I think the old fashioneds have times they produce less. We get a lot of rain and this is a soggy part of our yard but they do well. The big problem for them is the sheep nibble off the leaves on the other side of the fence ;)
And I do love this time of year, Robin where each day is longer. It's a special season-- with summer just ahead ;)
Lovely photos. I have roses in my front yard and I don't do anything but let them grow. They have just started blooming this week. I know you understand how exciting it was for me when I noticed they were so.
Soooooo Beautiful, Rain......The Flowers are Breath-taking as are your photo's, my dear.....
I do have a few roses and use a systemic which I work into the soil near them...and usually bees do not like my roses...except this year my yellow rose seems to be attracting them. I do have lots of other pollinating plants both wild and tame.
Neonicotinoids are a relatively new class of insecticides that share a common mode of action that affect the central nervous system of insects, resulting in paralysis and death. They include imidacloprid, acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, nithiazine, thiacloprid and thiamethoxam. It systemically will go into the plant, stay there and kill the honeybees. We looked at one of ours, one of the more popular ones and it had the neoni- family in it.
It's a choice gardeners, who want to keep their garden pretty, have to make now that we understand that killing insects means bees too. We can't be upset that the honeybees are being killed off and now know what we use to keep our garden pretty is part of it, and then blame the big farmers. We have met the enemy and it is us too. I guess we should have thought of it before that bees are insects. Insects feed birds and so the whole thing has a domino effect.
There are organic products but they are not as effective, of course. Aphids, I know from my own experience, can be squished right on the plant. Icky but effective. Buying ladybugs can help too as they eat the insects we don't want. But there are some we like-- dragonflies, ladybugs, praying mantis, butterflies. Some of the ones we do not like actually are needed by birds to survive. It is a choice now though and I think most of us before hadn't realized what was going on and that the disappearance of the honeybees could relate to our own practices.
Some want to petition Congress, write the companies etc. The easiest way to directly impact Monsanto and their ilk-- don't buy products that have chemicals known to kill honeybees. It's all about the bottom-line. Corporations like them don't care about honeybees.
Now, maybe it's not that simple and this is only one of the things leading to the demise of the honeybees. But it's one thing we small growers can do something about ourselves. The rest may be beyond us and leading to huge changes in what we see in nature :( Not a good thought.
You can wash the aphids off with a strong blast from the hose, or with a softer spray of a mix of Dawn and water.
Did not know about this new class of insecticide... research must be done as I am adding roses to my garden this year. Who knew they grew in the desert? But, they do!
a/b
They just take care, a/b. We had roses in the house we bought in Tucson but gave them to our realtor because we just would not be there enough. Mostly we stick to xeriscape now and no pots either for same reason as above.
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