And Then I Prune….

Her outdoors has many, many roses in the garden which, I'm assured by gardeners, is the best place to grow them.

Anyhoo, my little nest of vipers, upon looking through the oblong window yesterday and noticing a light drizzle floating down, a direction I'm assured by weather experts is the right direction, announced it would be a good day for us - and for 'us' read 'me', to prune the roses back for winter.

Now many of you may know that, if you follow the experts method, this is a complicated and time consuming process involving nodules and buds and runs something like this; locate the highest nodule/bud above the area where a branch occurs, then down to the lower branch with flower bearing nodules and buds on each stem, count back up three nodules, subtracting the first bud number that enters your head, locate that bud and nodule, take the sub branch, go one nodule up and cut a quarter inch above said bud.

Is that how I do it? You have to ask? I use my own tried and tested method, honed over the years, that has produced copious numbers of roses every year.

My method requires cutters, back saving long handled are good, and, for clearing up, gloves can be used unless your hands are scratch resistant. I call this rose pruning method hack 'em back to a two inch stump. Trust me, they'll be back next year thus requiring me, this time next year, to once again hack 'em back to a two inch stump.

Quote;  H. L. Mencken.

“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.”