Rain Blessings
Moving roses is always a risk. We moved them around the "villa" last winter. That was nearly a year after we sank the borehole and which pump "lives" in the "villa".
This is their second season in that spot and, suddenly, they are flourishing. Including the self-sown, pink climber that we put against the fence. We moved it from the "wrong" spot, smack bang in the middled of a narrow bed of agapanthus. Unwelcome and unwelcoming. The Husband didn't belive it was what I believed it was. Until it burst into flower for the first time this year.
Again, I must say: borehole blessings are wonderful, but good rains are the heavenly blessings that really make the garden grow.
In that patch, the strawberries provide both fruit for us, and will spread to form a living mulch for the roses.
Rambo watches over it all...when he's not perched at the back of the sofa or on the corner of my desk...
Until next time, be well
Fiona
The Sandbag House
McGregor, South Africa
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Roses are super slow rooters. I have dug up and moved many. When my grandmother died in 1982 she had a rose bush at her home that she brought from Oklahoma in the 1950's. She had planted it at her first home in California and then dug it up again and brought it to the home she passed in. My mother upon her death knowing the history of the rose bush dug it up and planted it in the backyard of my childhood home where she lived until she died in 2017. I remember walking in the backyard and being truly amazed to see that rose bush flourishing and loaded with beautiful rose blooms. It resides now in my backyard, it is at least 70 years old and it looked like it would die each time for the first year it was replanted, but it always came back with a vengeance the second year and seemed to have more blooms than ever. I wonder how long it will live and if it will still be going strong when I die? Thank you for bringing this fresh to mind with your story, I pass it almost every day but seldom stop to reflect on how valuable it is and the history it has, if only it could speak.
What a wonderful memory. They are unbelievably resilient, mostly. We moved the rose garden partly because we realised it was in the wrong spot but also because we lost some of the original bushes to the drought. Which has now properly broken. The deep red rose in the back left of the pic (I should take some "proper" ones) is a Papa Meiland. My mother's favourite rose and the rose that we sought out for my father after he had decided what to do with her ashes. That is a whole other story... So yes, I, too, have a rose in our garden that holds those sorts of memories. Along with a patch of sweet violets that came from my parents' garden and has moved with me, through five successive gardens in 22 years... People interfere with that patch at their peril...
roses very often bloom after winter and these flowers also enjoy rain.
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Spectacular roses so glad you moved them when you did, settled their roots with all the rains going through of late.
Strawberries looking good being served, are those also growing around the rose bushes?
Have a wonderful day, rains have been exceptionally good this year going into summer.
Yes those are mostly strawberries (with the odd weed) around the roses. I am hearing about floods around East London and the Wild Coast. Glad you are having rain and hope it's not too much!
Growing under rose bushes a good idea, my dad used to plant veg close to fruit trees on every available piece of land.
After long drought the rain will turn many areas into flooded regions, hard dry ground, paths walked into the earth, many areas no longer have the natural growth all stripped over the years.
And, I'm told, growing strawberries and roses together enhances flavour and fragrance. We have lettuces in our flower beds...
There is a lot to planting vegetables with flowers, some plants protect others, planting cactus on outer edges keeps much at bay with prickly spines keeping unwanted out, also needs little attention.