Roses are not my favorite flower. They seem extremely high maintenance and not terribly self-sufficient—just like the beautiful lawn I once had. Don’t get me wrong; I am not being judgmental of plants and flowers. It’s just that it’s the time of year when my neighbors are out mowing their lawns and trimming their shrubs and re-potting planters while I watch scruffy patches of dandelion puff balls overtake my yard as I rush to work and back from meetings and back to work again.
For a couple weeks it looked like the clover and violets were going to dominate everything—which would have been just fine with me! Dark green leaves and deep purple puddles of color would have been perfect (and low maintenance). Then we got one batch of rain and POOF! Tall gangly bitter salad greens with wispy messy heads began to move in like squatters who won’t pick up their own mess.
I wish I could afford the work crew and heavy machinery it would take to resurrect my lawn to the lush green carpet I am sure it once was. At this point, I am afraid it would take nothing short of an exorcism to rid the yard of the weeds.
Growing up, my mother planted ivy in her yard so she wouldn’t have to mow and weed. Back then, we had the greenest yard in the neighborhood!
If I could, I would certainly thatch and rototill and aerate and seed and water the yard myself.
I do enjoy gardening when I have down time. My dismal patch of dandelions aside, I have a few unique shrubs and plants that come back each year. Many of them have variegated leaves and unusually colored stems or bark and some even have flowers.
I always wanted an English garden—something completely unruly and wild with bright colors and sweet smells with irregular designs and paths that would attract butterflies and songbirds. What I have is a clump of plants that are tall enough to partially hide the front of my house. Sadly, this past winter took its toll and many of them are suffering from winter-burn and are dropping their early spring leaves. I am afraid my butterfly bush is simply a spindly set of dry twigs. My inkberry looks like a bristle end up parchment broom on one side. And my rose bushes… My sorry looking rose bushes were chewed to bits last fall by bugs and struggled with each bud they produced. Now they look like the endless snow and ice and cold have done them in.
Is this where I back track and say that I actually like roses? Not really. The variety in my yard is not from award-winning plants with celebrity names and long graceful stems designed for bouquets. These are the scrappy prickly roses you see growing at the edge of saltwater marshes, the ones that grow wild and angry with needle-like thorns wherever they can get a root hold in the sand. These are the roses that smell like a summer evening walk on the beach. These are the roses I like. And mine were mostly dead.
The first warm weather weekend, I, like everybody else, yanked open my shed and pulled out the gloves and raked and pruned and yanked and tidied up the yard. These skeletons of my roses were like barbed wire and caught my clothing and tore at my skin every time I tried to maneuver around them. They really didn’t look well. The branches were dry and brittle. You could see where the life had drained out and hadn’t returned.
In reluctant desperation, I pruned a few branches. I looked carefully. No sign of green or moisture. I began to cut more. I even took a saw to the very base of them. I carefully removed dead thorny branch after thorny branch. The entire time, for whatever reason, lines from “Alice in Wonderland” were scrolling through my head. I am sure the neighbors across the street were enjoying their front row seats as I muttered and swore and wiped blood from my hands and arms. The bushes were reduced to nubs in the mulch. No, not fresh mulch… just the layer of leaves from last fall that I neglected to rake before the winter.
Fast forward a few weeks. Last night I poured myself a glass of wine, and secured the dogs in the back yard to run through the winter moth caterpillar mess. (I will leave the caterpillars for another day). I took a stroll through my front yard. I kicked the heads of several dandelion heads (sure that my neighbors would like a few to float across the street so they can have some variety in their evenly toned lawn). My azaleas are almost past their blooms. My hostas are unfurling their broad leaves. There is some life in my hydrangeas. ‘Volunteer’ lilies are popping up and showing hope for a few flowers. There are tiny sprouts of green that could be from the bag of wildflower seeds I scattered a few weeks ago after I hacked my rose bushes down to their stumps. They could also simply be weeds. To my surprise, there are also deep purple leaves and tiny shoots sprouting from what is left of my roses.
Maybe by the end of the summer, they will grow enough to bloom. If they do, I hope I have time to stop and smell them.
About Cat Wilson
