Rosa 'Westerland' 29 May 2025

Since my Rosemary and I started opening our garden in the beginning of the 90s we were both obsessed on making the garden as perfect as we could. I would be instructed to mow the lawn a few days before the opening as she thought it displayed no class to make the lawn look like it was just mowed. Then she would cut the edge of the lawn at the flower beds with scissors.

We would make the round of nurseries to buy plants (many were annuals) to fill in the holes. She never skimped on spending.

Now alone, without her to guide me, I have been filling those holes and spending money, knowing that she would approve.

Because the members of the Vancouver Rose Society are coming this weekend to see the garden I have been at it all day removing yellow or black spot leaves from my roses and cutting off hosta leaves that have been consumed by hungry slugs.

But I must point out that roses have a self-defence mechanism in which when I am doing my preening the thorns get caught to my shirt, pants, hands and sometimes my face. I am unable to use gloves as I want to feel what I am doing.

There is something that happens, not too often, which is as I move into my roses some of the stalks get caught and when I move they bend. I can hear that awful snap.

Today I was using string and nails on the fence to bring in the rose shrubs that stick out and might prevent my garden visitors from moving around.

While stringing Rosa ‘Westerland’ I heard that snap. What bent ws a bloom not quite open with two buds.  What could I do?

I decided to write about it.