Cutting Remarks

Truly, A Rose Between Two Thorns

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

I had to photograph these roses just before I cut them down, just to remind us all how resilient these plants are - some of them flowering even in the Australian winter that gets colder the further south you go in the country-continent.

Last week we completed the pruning of the roses at Casa Authorblog - a long process, because there are so many rose bushes around the property. A lot of people start cutting their roses back as soon as winter begins, but I have a slightly different theory.

The way I figure it, there’s not much point cutting roses back while we still get heavy frost as well as ice in the morning. So I let them be, with their straggly branches bare of any leaves, but I get the secateurs out in late July, when the worst of the frosts are behind us.

Then we begin the long job of pruning each bush. Some of them grow to the limit of my arm’s reach, and there is one climbing rose in particular that reaches about four metres in height. As each bush is pruned, we use secateurs to cut the branches into smaller bits and these are then loaded into a special bin for gardening-related items.

Already, some of the bushes have started to sprout new growth, fresh leaves and shoots that are a rich burgundy. And now I start checking each bush for aphids, those little green insects that suck the life out of any fresh shoots.

Kinda like an "Aphid and Goliath" situation, huh?


Visit Luiz Santilli Jr for the home of Today's Flowers.

Verse And Worse

Random Wit, Errant Rhyme. Not A Literary Crime

Pruning your roses in the middle of winter
Ensures that the stems will never splinter
Cut the stems cleanly and on a sharp angle
And the buds that bloom will never tangle

Flower Power

For He's A Jolly Good Yellow

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

There is no better floral tribute to the memory of a cherished family member than flowers from your own garden. Our home this weekend was full of the scent of roses, in honour of someone who enjoyed walking through our garden at this time of year and always commented on how the scent of our many rose bushes along the entire perimeter of our property simply filled the warm spring air.

The roses are just coming into bloom now. I cut them back in early August, much later than other gardeners, for a simple reason. I don't believe in pruning while we still have winter frost. So I cut back when the nights are (fractionally) warmer and the roses seem to reward my thought process.

Each plant is thriving despite the dry weather, the arid September and the fact that because of water restrictions, we cannot water our lawns. Our garden is now an array of colours and scents and so from this point onwards, while the rest of the world readies for winter, our vases at home are full of a profusion of the beat that Nature has to offer.

These roses are from a climbing Freesia variety. I never used to be a fan of climbing roses until I bought one by mistake a few years ago. It now occupies about seven or eight metres (roughly 24 feet) across part of our back fence and I guess that convinced me that there is always room in a garden for more of the climbing variety.

These yellow roses were chosen to complement the colour of our bricks. Interestingly enough, I often get asked why I don't have a traditional wooden trellis supporting them. That's when I take people closer, to notice the subtle wire mesh across the brickwork, strong enough to support a heavy rose as it arches across an expanse, but slim enough not to be noticed.

By the way, you did notice the reflection in this last shot, didn't you? Sometimes even a six-footer has to stand on a chair to get that sort of angle.

Visit Luiz Santilli Jr for the home of Today's Flowers.