Coming up roses, part 2

As reported last month, the roses are coming back nicely. Most of the bushes have buds on them.

  

Some are almost ready to burst into flower. Hurrah!

I want to give them as much encouragement as possible, which means surrounding them (and the lilac, which has now had its first dose of Dave’s magic “make flowers” cocktail) with compost and/or sea soil. What I don’t want is the compost and/or sea soil being sprayed all over the rest of the slanting bed when I water them.

I know! I’ll make rock circles around them to keep the good stuff  where it needs to be.

I survey my handiwork. It’s okay and it should do the job, but I’m just not quite sure. I go inside, make myself a cuppa and come back for another look. Nope. Just looks like a job half done. And it’s not as if I have any shortage of rocks, is it?

Much better. Settle myself on the swing with Stella to admire my rocky rose bed. Oh, that smug feeling of a job well (rather than half) done.

Elsewhere in the garden: Came back into the house Monday morning after watering the garden to report thrilling news to my visiting friend Catherine: the regular peas are sprouting! She shares my excitement. It is after all what we gardeners (both proper and useless like me) live for, is it not?

This morning there is further excitement. Despite the fact that one of the cats (my money’s on Roxie) keeps trying to use the veggie bed as a litter box, a row of beet leaves has appeared! No sign yet of carrots, lettuce, spinach, rocket or squash, but it’s still early days, isn’t it? (Or isn’t it?)

Fingers crossed.

Coming up roses

My first full day in the garden. Still in April and it feels like June. This does not bode well, comrade. Suspect we’re in for another long, hot summer. At least we had more rain last winter than we did the previous year. Fingers crossed.

First job of the day (after retrieving the swing cushions from the shed) is a bit of pet cemetery maintenance. Weed around and add compost to first Angie and Tri’s rose bushes…

… then Clancy’s

The other rose bushes are also coming back nicely.

Although, sadly, the one at the back on the right looks as if it might be dead. Oh, no, wait a minute, on closer inspection…

Check this out! A new rose bush seems to be coming up out of the roots of the seemingly dead one! The last time this happened, the roses on the new bush were a completely different colour. Wonder if this will happen again? (Wonder if I can remember what colour the roses on this bush were before?) 

Don’t worry, I shall keep you posted.

Blooming (not so) marvellous

Yes, I know. The garden updates are coming thin and slow. What can I say? First I was busy rehearsing for the world premiere of my play, and since then I have been (believe it or not) in rehearsals for staged readings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Seriously.

And then, of course, there is the almost completely irresistible prospect of spending time on the garden swing with Stella and a book. When am I supposed to find time to catch up?

So today we are going to have a few words about blossoms, going back to early May.

There are vases filled with lilacs all through the house, thanks to a bumper crop of blossoms.

Pretty impressive, eh?

Unfortunately, this is not my lilac tree. It’s Pat’s. My tree has once again failed to produce a single bloom. Apparently my tree will only bloom for Krys. And then (given that she was here in March) only if she’s here at blossom time.  Even more annoyingly, the second lilac I bought last year and planted in the excavated hole filled with sea soil has also (despite the promises of the garden shop) failed to produce a single bloom.

It’s a good thing Pat is very generous with his lilacs.

Elsewhere, the apple tree, which produced an abundance of blossom the first year (and one apple) and an abundance of blossom the second year (and eight apples), doesn’t seem all that happy. It took a long time for it to even begin producing leafs and this year there is not a single blossom. Oddly enough, neither has Pat’s much older and well-established apple tree, so I tell myself (somewhat optimistically) that perhaps apple trees occasionally take a year off. Au contraire, I discover when I later make enquiries at the garden shop. Have I, they ask, pruned it? Pruned it? It’s a tiny little spliced apple tree that consists of little more than twigs. Surely pruning it would kill it? Apparently not. Oh, well. Next year.

Back in early April, the pear tree, added last year, did produce a lot of blossom.

Several weeks later there is nothing on the tree even hinting it might turn into a pear.  So much for my orchard plans. (Yes, I am kidding.)

Leaping forward to June, there is some better bloomin’ news.

 The never-watered, never-disappoints blackberry is once again producing an abundance of bee-friendly blossom.

And every day there are new roses for the bud vases.

Now. If you’ll forgive me, the garden swing calls.

Rock garden

I’d forgotten (having for some reason given up on it in 2010) quite how much fun one can have digging up rocks for three hours.

Especially when one’s excavation involves rocks this size. (Shades of Catherine’s comments about the Canadian Shield.) For some mad reason I am determined not to be defeated by boulders, so I’m going to be back at it tomorrow.

Get your magnifying glass out for the next two photos.

The lettuce and rocket are sprouting!

And the first rose bud has appeared.

It’s all go now.

There’s a new rose bush in the garden

Twenty years ago, although we already had my two cats (Crazy Clancy and Lady Jenny), Mike and I decided that it would probably be good for Heather, his cat-loving daughter (at the time living with us), to have a kitten of her own.

A friend of a friend had taken in a stray who turned out to be pregnant. Mama Cat somehow managed to produce eight kittens: five females and three males, all with remarkably similar colouring and markings. I figured a female kitten would be less likely to make Crazy Clancy any crazier. By the time I rang the woman in question, four of the females had already been adopted. There was one female – claimed by me – and the three males left.

As explained in a previous posting, Heather and I set off to collect one kitten and came back with two.

Angie, the female, quickly worked out that she was getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop as far as Heather’s affections were concerned and decided she was going to adopt Mike as her person. No argument from him.

If not at first sight, it was definitely love.

When I returned to Gabriola after Mike’s sudden death in Vancouver, Angie had no interest in me or in Catherine, who so kindly came back with me. Angie trotted out to the car to see where Mike was and when it was clear to her that he was not with me she was inconsolable.

But we muddled along. As well as having Tri on my lap while I was reading or watching telly in the evening, I now also had Angie curled up by my shoulder.

Blind as a bat, Tri kept on grooming Angie.

About this time last year the vet told me Angie’s kidney functions had all but packed in. There were, he said, medication which might work, but no guarantee. I started trying to prepare myself for the worst. Happily, the medication did seem to do the job. Angie perked up, back in my arms again.

Then Tri, my big galoot, got sick and was gone so quickly I couldn’t believe it.

Jenny died in 2002, aged 16. She was buried in what was then barely a garden. Clancy made it to age 18. Typically, although he’s been in the garden for several years, he can still scratch.

The same weekend I buried Tri under a rose bush last October, I dug another hole nearby, convinced his sister would soon be following him. I started trying to make bargains (with whom I’m not quite sure): Please don’t let Angie die before my birthday, before Christmas. Like the Energiser bunny, she just kept going, bless her. In the spring I filled the hole back in.

Well, we were together for nearly a year longer than I thought we would be. But when she stopped curling up with me in the evenings and then stopped eating anything except cooked chicken, I knew it was time to let her go.

I’m not much on the afterlife, but as I buried her beside her brother yesterday I was hoping that Angie and Mike have been reunited.

For the first time since we bought this house in 1996 there is no cat in it. But there are four in the garden.

Floral notes

Back in the spring, when Krys was taking a turn digging the hole for my (one) apple tree, she tried to move this pot out of the way, not realising the rose bush had taken root in the ground underneath. She ended up being scratched by a rose thorn. “Well,” I said, unable to suppress a smile, “it is Clancy.” (This being the rose bush I’d bought to replace the bedraggled fuchsias marking crazy Clancy’s shallow grave.) Given the temperament of my old black cat, she did laugh.

I’d already pointed out to her the ceanothus marking Jenny’s grave and the rose bush marking the spot where last autumn I buried poor old Tri. Krys looked from Clancy’s rose bush to me. “This isn’t a garden,” she said. “It’s a pet cemetery.” Well, perhaps, but it is a garden, too. (That said, I suspect it’s not going to be long before I need another rose bush. Angie, Tri’s sister and very much Mike’s cat, has held on longer than the vet thought she possibly could last year. She’s a game old gal, who hopefully will turn 20 soon, but it’s just a matter of time.)

Clancy’s rose bush hasn’t been doing all that well. I think it might have managed one blossom per year the previous two summers, but, as elsewhere in the garden, this year is a whole new year.

There are already four red roses ready to open up.

Tri’s rose is also ready to bloom.

Elsewhere in the garden…

The dahlias Pat donated to the cause earlier this year are starting to flower. Unfortunately, when Krys asked me where I wanted them planted before I left for the UK, I picked the wrong spot.

They’re behind the tomato plants, which are much taller this year than I remember them ever being in previous years. Thus, you can barely see the dahlias. Note to self: move dahlias next spring.

And another floral note to self: I need to investigate bee-friendly late flowering plants. The bees loved the apple blossom (main reason I am being very philosophical about the lack of actual apples). Just as the apple blossom was disappearing, the ceanothus (which they really love) bloomed. And just as the flowers on the ceanothus were finishing, the blackberry bush started to flower. Again, happy bees. But what about after the blackberry blossom? The bees are still around, but I have nothing for them.

Must do better for the poor bees.