Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Roses and Jeeps

I'm "stuck" on my rose bush, uh, I mean shrub rose--after all, I am now a garden sophisticate, therefore 'tis a shrub. Here's why I subconsciously got one I think, though I dislike them:

I have this section from my memoir--too long to put here--where as a kid my mom wanted a rose taken out of the front rock garden. She pulled back the rock and stabbed at the earth around the rose. She became merciless as tends to happen. Down the street you could hear her "hayahs" and the shovel banging against larger rocks / boulders in chaotic agony to get that rose out.

Eventually, she enlisted my dad's help. What I like about my dad, and this may or may not be a guy / husband thing, is he got frustrated within seconds and vanished into the garage. Perplexed, mom stood out front thinking he'd abandoned her. A little bit later he comes out with chains, ropes, hooks, et cetera, and plops them on the ground. Then goes back to the garage and backs his jeep up the yard to in front of the rock garden. He hitches up some chain and rope, lassos the shrub a few times, careful to get down on one side of the exposed rootball. Eventually, and longer than you'd think, that shrub popped out like a champaign cork as the jeep flew about fifty feet down the street. That's my idea of solving a gardening problem.

1 comment:

this said...

Er, one little rose turns into more than one rose and when space doesn't allow for any more the next step is shovel pruning the poor performers...just so you can put another rose in it's place. Welcome to the mad world of rose gardeners.

Hope you've got a jeep handy, stubborn little blighters.