More yard work

The weather wasn't quite as  nice as yesterday.  The sky was overcast all day, but the temperature was mild and the wind wasn't quite as strong so it was a good day to be outside again.  So we were back out doing yard work again.  Mr. G finished raking up the pine cones and pine straw and I began   pruning the roses,   getting rid of the honeysuckle  and greenbrier vines that were strangling the roses and cutting out the forest of privet that had grown up in the flower beds. We're predicted to get rain beginning late tonight  lasting through Wednesday so we were trying to get as much done as we could before the rain got here. Of course we didn't finish but we made a pretty big dent in it. I finally had to  stop because the  thorns on the briers and roses were   getting through my gloves and sleeves and sticking me. It's  frustrating  to have to be so cautious, but the nurses warned me to be very careful gardening while on the chemo since it is so easy for a cut or puncture to get infected and one of the drugs actually inhibits  wound healing. I was beginning to think I might need falconer's gloves  and a suit of armor  to tackle the roses and briers since we had let them go last year and they had gotten  quite big and out of hand.  Also the  vines had   wrapped so tightly around some stalks of the Zephirine Drouhin that the   wood was completely dead, so she looks pretty bad right now.

We got the Ballerina, Red Cascade,  Zephirine Drouhin pruned but still have some pruning  to do on the Katy Road Pink and the Perle d'Or.  I hope the ones we did today  put off a lot of new growth  and bloom well this summer despite the drastic pruning we  gave them.  Here are some pics from previous years of a few of the roses in bloom.  I was surprised that  I didn't have  many pics of the roses among my garden photos and none of the ballerina or red cascade in bloom. The first three are  pics of the Katy Road Pink and the last is a little vase of  several different ones from the garden, along with some blooms from the buddleia - they smelled heavenly, especially the Zephirine Drouhin and the Katy Road:

Off the beaten path

A couple of days ago, I had a meeting in Montgomery. Since my car has been acting strangely, Mr. G drove me . On the way home, I commented that it would be nice to take a side trip and stop off in Jemison to visit one of our favorite nurseries. Mr. G agreed, and we headed off to Petals from the Past, a nursery owned by Jason and Shelley Powell, specializing in heirloom plants, especially old-fashioned roses. But they grow and sell an astounding number of so many plants- including not only the gorgeous, fragrant old-fashioned roses, but perennials, vegetables, herbs, fruit, garden art, water garden plants, and more. The nursery store is an old farmhouse, surrounded by an inviting wraparound porch and breathtaking display gardens. I was sorry that I didn't have my camera with me. All the roses we've bought there have done well in our garden. Almost too well, as you can see from this Katy Road Pink-if I ever manage to keep the spent blooms picked, it keeps blooming and blooming, but it is SO loaded, that the task becomes an impossibility. But it also bears lovely large hops, which the birds love, so all is not lost. This bush has never been sprayed, the only fertilizer is a side dressing of compost every once in a while, and has survived droughts, floods and neglect. Katy Road is a real trooper, as are most of the heirloom roses I've encountered. Here's a close-up of one of the buds:

I must apologize for the poor quality of some of the pics I've been posting. The cover to the battery compartment on the camera is broken. In order to take a photo, one must keep it squeezed shut while trying to keep the camera steady- which sometimes proves difficult.

We didn't buy any roses on this trip, but did buy some herbs and veggie plants and a Meyer Lemon tree to replace the one we lost a couple of years ago. It even has some buds- so we may get lemons this year!

The nursery also has you-pick fields of blackberries, which just opened. The huge berries are now ripening and should hit their peak in a week or two. The plants are grown on post and wire trellises in long rows, which makes picking easy- and you don't get covered in chiggers in the process. Since I was dressed for a business meeting, not for berry picking we didn't even try this time, but I'm thinking we need to make another trip down there in the next two weeks.