Anyone who has been to our house, or walked past it, will keenly remember the rambling rose bush with deadly sharp branches which grew over 30 feet long. We planted it the first summer we lived in the house. This past winter was too much for the old dear and every branch froze solid. This spring, when everything else burst with greenery, the rose branches slowly turned black and brittle. After hoping and hoping that it was just "late" this year I finally faced reality and started snipping off the dead branches. It took three weeks and filled 10 leaf bags. Here it the now empty archway at the edge of our yard.
The plant's roots are actually alive and as I worked I uncovered more and more saplings which were straining to grow through the thickets. They have clear run now. As God is my witness, I will train these branches more diligently than I did the last ones. No more will our neighbors swear a blue streak when they walk past our house at dusk and get their face and hair clawed raw by this bush.
One long and winding arm of a branch was bent down to the ground last fall. A huge heap of rotting leaves lay across it all winter. By spring it had set out roots and was doing fine. Since it was in the middle of the yard (which is not an ideal place for this giant octopus of a plant), I dug it up and planted it in the backyard. It's been a week now and is still looking rather fine.
The plant's roots are actually alive and as I worked I uncovered more and more saplings which were straining to grow through the thickets. They have clear run now. As God is my witness, I will train these branches more diligently than I did the last ones. No more will our neighbors swear a blue streak when they walk past our house at dusk and get their face and hair clawed raw by this bush.
One long and winding arm of a branch was bent down to the ground last fall. A huge heap of rotting leaves lay across it all winter. By spring it had set out roots and was doing fine. Since it was in the middle of the yard (which is not an ideal place for this giant octopus of a plant), I dug it up and planted it in the backyard. It's been a week now and is still looking rather fine.
2 comments:
It's amazing that anything survived the winter you had!
There were no half-ways. Either plants came back with a vengeance (everything was dormant until the middle of May and suddenly EVERYTHING that lived was fully green and covered in pollen--the air is thick with pollen fluff blowing around--absolutely terrible for allergies, mosquitoes and asthma) or completely died as in deader than a door nail. There is a street not far from our house on which every single tree lining the road is dead--no leaves, no bark, no nothing. And some of those trees are more than 2' thick. There's seemingly no rhyme or reason to it.
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