Thursday, Mar. 06, 2003 – 5:51 p.m.
2003-03-06 5:51
Roses at Home Depot
Day before yesterday, I went by Home Depot to get a tool to work on the plumbing problem I have been having. Bsically my bathtub drain has been leaking and it caused a spot in the ceiling of the dining room to fall in… I replaced the connections to the tub and the trap but it still drips a little. I went to Home Depot to get a pair pliers big enough to let me get a good grip to tighten the connections… We will see how well it works.
Anyway, I wandered over to the garden center to see what roses they have in stock. Since it is the beginning of March, all the roses are bare-root tubes (roots packed in damp sawdust wrapped in plastic and the canes dipped in wax), or Rose-in-a-box. The rose tubes were either blue wrappers (non-patented) for $3.95 or purple (patented) for $8.95. Most of the varieties were ones I recognized and that are fairly common: Peace, Chrysler Imperial, Angel Face, etc. Others I didn’t recognize, like “Town & Country Rose” (it appears to be a family of roses.. probably a subset of shrubs) They also had about a half dozen tree roses that I was looking at. I don’t have any tree roses…. hmmm….
As I was standing there, a family (father, mother, kids aged 4 and 2 or so) came by and were looking at the roses as well. I struck up a conversation and started giving some suggestions regarding varieties and how to choose a good bush from among the piles of tubes. I talked about how to plant them, how to prune them, feeding them… pretty much the whole nine yards in about 15 minutes. They walked away with about a dozen bushes (they said they had a bed to plant them in so they wanted 4 climbers to go along a fence and about 8 others to fill out the front of the bed. I also told them about the RRS and when we meet and all. Hopefully we will see them at a future meeting. Made me feel good that I could help them [grin]
One of the interesting things was that HD has several Rose de Rescht in the pile. I am tempted to go back and get one to put in another pot.
Officer Meeting
Last night was the monthly officer meeting of the Raleigh Rose Society. It was Rich (the president), Darrell (the secretary), Dave (the treasurer), and myself (programs). We spent most of the time discussing the different classes (catagories) for the rose show, who had sponsored prizes in the past, and other issues regarding the upcoming show in May. Darrell is in-charge of the show so he is making the phone calls to the folk who sponsored prizes in the past. David has the judges list. Rich is doing the schedule booklets. I actually do not have a major part to play in the prep for the show (for which I am glad at this point …)
My task is to line up a speaker for the end of the month. My current idea is to get a professor from here on campus to give us a talk regarding rose diseases. It turns out that there are two professors that wrote a web document on roses diseases for the NC Extension Service back in 1999. Now I just need to make contact with one of them. Well, even if I strike out with them, maybe they can point me to someone else… maybe bugs or something similar…
My Garden
Well, the weather is warming up.. WooHoo! now if it will rain a little less. I need to get out and prune my roses! Sunday would have been a good day but I was stuck at work. Yesterday was a Gorgeous day… sunny and highs in the mid 60s. Alas, I was stuck at work. So, I guess I will just have to hope for resonable weather over the weekend…
We will see…