Rose Campaign.

7-15-09 VERMONT: The boys are in nature camp everyday which gives us time to get all the chores done. When they’re here, they’re in and out of the pond, catching frogs, in the boat, playing with the dogs and non-stop all day, but needing supervision. Camp is more for us than for them.

Things have been slowly drying out even though we have had showers everyday, but have accumulated no more than a trace. It is still cold, barely reaching 70° maximum.

I have been working on the fence roses. They live in a slot between a stone wall and a split rail fence. The slot is two to four feet wide, and difficult to access with a trimmer. The slot was full of jewel weed, mint, ferns, equisetum, grape vines and other nameless weeds. The thorny roses hang over the fence, reaching out to the wall. I got in the slot and spent a day weeding and pruning the roses, avoiding the thorns, and got it pretty clean. Then I started putting down porous plastic mulching fabric to, perhaps, prevent future weed re-growth. I finished the plastic layer the next day, working around the roses and fence posts and, finally, covered the plastic with peat moss.


Notice the series of holes in the periphery of the upper petals of this rose? When the flower was still a bud and the petals still all wrapped together, some bug took a bite. The effect is the same as cutting a hole in a folded and re-folded piece of paper and then opening in up to see several holes.

New blooms: mallow, bind weed.


Delphinium.