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Category: Flower gardens | Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 1:13 pm

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As I mentioned on "My Garden" I spent yesterday afternoon wrestling with a rose. I think the rose won.
There is a very large (6' tall, almost as wide) rose bush in back of the manse at the church up the road. Last fall when I went to get cuttings, I noticed a lot of dead wood on the rose, and it was covered with bindweed.
Never one to leave well enough alone, I asked permission to prune and refresh the bush. The congregation knows a sucker when they see one, so I quickly got permission.
I should have sold tickets to the performance! First I put on my heaviest gloves and started pulling bindweed off. That was when I found my gloves weren't really all that heavy. I put a pair of my husband's gloves over mine--that kept the bleeding to a minimum.
Then I got my long-handled loppers and attacked some of the bigger dead branches. They attacked right back.
After I managed to wrestle the branches out of the rose bush and pick the thorns, leaves, and heaven-knows-what out of my hair, I decided to wear a hat. The next challenge was to wrestle my hat out of the rose bush where some thorns were holding on to it for dear life. Who knew roses were fashionistas?
Finally I got down to cutting away the dead tips and de-suckering the bush (and no, that doesn't mean that this sucker was leaving!). I managed pretty well since I had on long sleeves, and I'm likely to heal up in a week or two.
By this time I had a pickup truck loaded with debris, all of it thorny and none of it willing to stay in place. I had a tarp, so I tied that over the bed of the truck to hold everything until I could get home to our burn pile. Have you ever tried to get a tarp OFF a load of thorny stems? It takes a while and it is not fun!
When my husband got home and saw my scratches, band-aids, and generally tuckered appearance, he said, "Oh, you got at that rose bush. Who won?"


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eileen wrote on Tue Mar 08, 2011 2:08 pm:

WOW that was a battle and a half wasn't it?
Sorry to say that your tale made me giggle when I read it. I could just imagine that bush grabbing your hat while you wrestled with it. Nice to know that you, eventually, won the war of the roses!!

I'm sure

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toni wrote on Tue Mar 08, 2011 2:21 pm:

I have never had one grab onto my hat but that's about the only part of me they don't sink their thorns into when I trim them back every fall.

Get a pair of Mechanix Gloves, the thorns will stick to them but don't go through to the skin.

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cherylad wrote on Tue Mar 08, 2011 2:33 pm:

Bet the rose bush did appreciate the attention... even though it didn't show it at the time!

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Netty wrote on Fri Mar 11, 2011 1:26 pm:

I feel your pain, I really do!
There are 16 vigorous Rose bushes at work that I pruned last year. I wore a heavy rain coat and thick gloves and still left that garden bleeding! Most of the wounds healed quickly, except for a couple that still had thorns in them ;)

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chihuahua mama wrote on Mon Mar 14, 2011 7:16 am:

you have a flair for writing! I felt like I was there and I must admit, I wouldn't have been able to not laugh. We've all tackled thorny, clingy roses, or the dreaded blackberry bushes. Hope you continue to blog about your adventures!

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