A BUNCH OF PRICKS

A BUNCH OF PRICKS

 

Last week, I asked someone to save me from the roses.

 

No one did.

 

I did get an offer to swap my roses for one noisy cricket. I would have taken the cricket if you would have included your gardener in the package.  Better luck next time.

 

The second offer received was an invitation to send a certain Tinkerbelle look-a-like a dozen roses.  I would normally oblige, but I am sure she made the offer from Disneyland whilst riding on the tea cups and laughing, and that makes me jealous. 

 

The third offer was one of confusion but genuine hope for my rose salvation.

 

Let me better explain the situation.

 

Down here on the bottom side of the planet it is the middle of winter and that means it is time to prune roses.

 Over here on the western side of the bottom side of the planet, it does not get cold enough to snow or even to wear more than a warm sweater.  This fact depresses me because a cold winter is a fantastic excuse to go overboard on the accessories and layer on the scarves, gloves, hats, boots and fabulous wool jackets.

 

I digress.

 

For this warm weather reason, one is technically not required to hard prune or even prune roses at all outside of  keeping shape and removing dead wood.  Of course I say this, and anybody who has roses knows that every mother and their dog have an opinion on rose pruning and that opinion is the always right one.

 

I may have mentioned somewhere that there are 175 roses on The Farm.  Most of these roses had not been pruned or dead headed in several years, which means they were full of dead wood, criss-crossing branches and large bunches of clover.

 

It is not an easy task to prune 175 roses. Strike that, I found hidden rose bushes this past weekend and the total reached 180.

 

It is not an easy task to prune 180 roses.

 

One particular almost ancient weeping standard rose, took me three days.  Three days. Three days on one rose. It was that bad.

 

The final task was to start on the roses which line the little garden circle in the middle of the driveway.  

 

These particular roses have an over abundance of thorns on every square centimeter of the branches.  These thorns I can only compare to tiny little ginsu knives.  I could use these thorns to filet fish.

 

Even with my special rose pruning gloves, my arms appear as if I stuck them down a  garbage disposal.

 

Most traumatizing of this whole event was that every time I closed my eyes I saw rose branches.  In fact, last night was the only night in the past two weeks that I did not dream of pruning roses.

 

Can anyone tell me what it means when one dreams of having lunch with Liza Minnelli?

 

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