Rose War and New Blooms

Thursday, Jul. 18, 2002 – 12:01pm

2002-07-18 12:01

No Enemy in Sight

This morning I did my usual walk through of the rose garden as I leave for work (well, sometime its when I go out to get the paper…). I grabbed my spraybottle of Bayer Advanced Rose and Flower Insect Killer (BARFIK) and headed for the garden. Night before last, Francesca had been by and I showed her the garden by flashlight. At that time, we noticed that there was at least one bloom that the beetles had congregated on and consumed. Yesterday being Wednesday, my usual day for doing spraying, so I suited up to use the Ortho Orthonex. However, I spot treated with the Bayer Advanced to be sure I killed the beetles that were there at the time. Orthonex is good for a lot of things but Japanese Beetles isn’t one of them {sigh}. I dosed the open blooms of the light colored varieties (JFK, Fragrant Cloud, QE, French Lace, Double Delight…. Peace, Scentimental and Suffolk currently don’t have any blooms) and many of the darker red ones (Mr Lincoln, King of Hearts). Followed up with the application of Orthonex. I gave the Rosa Mundi a good dose since I have seen some evidence of mildew on its leaves in the past.

Back to this morning…. I only found TWO live beetles! A couple of squirt with the BARFIC should nail those two. Does this mean that the beetle season is finally coming to a close? I sure hope so!

New Blooms

The plants in the bed 4 are finally producing some blooms. French Lace is looking the best with about a dozen on it. Europeana doesn’t have much foliage but has about 5 blossoms at present… right next to the ground. Dolly Parton just finish one blossom but, like Europeana, it is not very tall (less than 12 inches). Glowing Peace has produced one bloom. Of course, I have three nice size bushes in this bed that are NOT currently blooming because they are ORG and only bloom once a year: Rembrandt, Rosa Mundi, and Madame Hardy. These have good growth so I am hoping that I will get blooms next spring. In fact, Rembrandt was getting a little long and leggy so I pruned the ends of the longest/tallest canes to encourage more branching (at least I think that is what it should do.) Even the mini I put in there (the name of which escapes me… I need to do a map! this also why I am doing this diary…) has a nice cluster of blooms. Even the two Fairy polyanthas are blooming. The pinestraw mulch appears to be helping A LOT… Guess I should have done that earlier.

I did notice that I need to do some weeding in bed 3. {sigh} Given the temps of late, that means I need to get up EARLY so I can do that before it gets hot.

House Stuff

The bleach solution that Aed suggested really worked on the water stains in the dining room ceiling! Thanks, Aed! The replacement of the board in the porch went fine. It is about 1/2 inch too long but I don’t really care. I used the cold chisel to clean out the old mortar where I am resetting the bricks on the back stoop. I need to re-read the section in the house repair books I borrowed about how to do the mortar and set the bricks. Hey, a new skill! I also have a long list of general house cleaning and organization tasks to do like cleaning the spots in the carpet, reorganizing books and stuff, and clearing out and doing a thorough cleaning of the frig and freezer. I guess if I made the strawberry jam, that would clear out some space in the freezer…..

Plan for Pennsic? When??

I am also involved in a major project at work. In fact I was at the office until able 11:30 last night making a big push to get a bunch of my stuff done. I was moderately successful at it too! I need to get as much done this week as I can since I will be in 5 full days of onsite training all next week. This means I have this week and the week after next (plus two days the following week) before I leave for Pennsic to get my work stuff done. AAAAAHHHH!!!

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