Garden Trials

This spring, into early summer, my butterfly garden was just beautiful. It heralded an impressive array of blue and purple flowers. I enjoyed sitting outside in the morning and watching the hummingbirds, butterflies and bees enjoying their morning meal.

But spring flowers die with summer's heat, and only a few brave sunflowers popped up to take their place. (Turns out the golden finches that pass through each summer enjoy their seeds, and I was thrilled to see two pair out there last week.) But the sunflowers won't last forever, and I wanted more plants in my garden, so off to the garden store I went a couple of weeks ago. I carefully planted the beautiful flowers I found there, and have been watering them diligently.

Turns out I bought some expensive rabbit food.

They haven't killed the plants, but all of the blooms are gone, nibbled away a few at a time, each morning's sunshine bringing less color to my world.

There are a few volunteer flowers around the edges of the yard, and the rabbits don't like the marigolds, so all is not lost, but it's going to be slim pickin's for my garden's intended beneficiaries this summer. **sigh**

On the other side of the path, next to the driveway, I have an arbor, and two two-year old, disease resistant, rose bushes. Turns out disease resistant, in bushes as in people, is not the same thing as disease-free. As I was walking by a little over a week ago, I noticed the lower leaves on one of the bushes were rapidly turning yellow, covered in black spots.

Ah, yes. An internet search quickly turned up references to the dreaded and ancient, black spot fungus. Back to the garden store I went, with a sample of the afflicted leaves in hand. They gave me a container of Bayer's Advanced Rose Care (and here I've always just associated Bayer with aspirin. What do I know?), told me to water it in, and it would, hopefully, resolve the problem.

I brought the medicine home, followed the instructions, and have been carefully watching the bush ever since. (I also watered some in around the base of the other bush as a preventative.) Every day or so, I go out with my clippers and carefully clip out the diseased leaf clusters.

At first, it felt like an exercise in futility. Cane after cane dropped almost all of its leaves, the disease rapidly spreading towards the top of the plant. But then, new leaves started to fill in, and they haven't yet shown any signs of the fungus. I grow perhaps overly attached to my plants - it did my heart good to know it might just make it.

A few days ago, I saw a bud on the end of one of the partially denuded canes. The next morning, it had opened into a lovely, miniature, rose. Despite the fungus, despite the missing leaves, my bush had once again fulfilled its botanical mission and flowered.

Like people, and kittens, and the mosquitoes who swiftly dodge as I try to swat them, the rosebush wants to live. I've done what I can to help it; the rest is up to the heart of the plant.

Go, rosebush, go!!!