Thursday, Sept. 05, 2002 – 3:26 p.m.
2002-09-05 3:26
Rain Glorious Rain!
I had intended to respray on Sunday or Monday of last week but Sunday night, the heavens opened up and it started raining. Spraying in the rain is both messy and not very effective. It basically started raining on Sunday night and rained all week off and on. Since we really need the rain, I am not complaining. Of course, lots of rain means that it’s warm and wet which is perfect for the growth of fungi like blackspot and the mildews.[sigh]
Roses for Grandma
This past weekend (Labor Day weekend), I flew up to eastern Iowa (Muscatine, IA… flew into Moline, IL) for my cousin Jess’s wedding. It was a nice visit and I got to see fair number of my father’s side of the family. Of my father’s five siblings, three were here (if you count the father of the bride); his sisters (Sue and Sarah) didn’t make it.
Fortunately (from my point of view), Sarah now lives near Atlanta so I have more opportunities to see her. Hey, I generally like my relatives. Ok, one of my uncles has some different political views from mine and there has been some friction between the siblings in the past but hey, it seems that would be true of almost any family. Blood is thicker than water and all that.
I think that I wrote in an earlier entry that I had written a letter to both my grandmothers with pictures of my roses. Since my grandmother would probably be at the wedding (she actually lives in a nursing home about 3 hours east of Muscatine.), I decided to take some of my roses with me for her. I managed to find some of those individual water containers that florist use. Since I was flying out at the crack of dawn on Friday, I cut the roses on Thursday night. However, I didn’t put the stems in the individual waterpicks until the following morning. The other issue I had to figure out was how to actually transport the flowers. I used a plastic shoebox and that worked pretty well. I just laid the flowers in on top of each other. The roses I took were French Lace, Double Delight, Perfect Moment, Queen Elizabeth, Peace, Francis Dubreuil, King of Hearts, Caesar Chavez, and Rose de Rescht. All in all, I had a dozen roses (well actually a few more because the French Lace stem was actually a spray). All except the Rose de Rescht came through fine. Alas, I think Rose de Rescht just doesn’t travel well.
I gave all of the roses except the Peace to Grandma. I gave the Peace bloom to Jess, the bride. Grandma loved them! I think she was really touched. I hope they last. Just before I left on Sunday, I refilled the individual water holders for her. I came back Sunday afternoon and that actually took longer than I was originally scheduled for. My original flight out of Moline was delayed getting into Moline so they put me on a flight that routed me Minneapolis rather than Memphis. The flight out of Minneapolis was scheduled to leave at 6:40 and get in about 10pm. I had originally scheduled to get in at about 8:30pm. As it was I got in about midnight because a storm came through as we were about to take off. We ended up sitting on the tarmac for about 2 hours while the weather passed over and they resequenced the take-offs.
Back to the Garden
Monday was Labor Day. Looking at the yard, I need to mow the lawn. However, monday morning was cloudy so the grass was still wet for most of the morning. Oh, well. I did get spray the roses though. I applied the Fruit and Tree spray which has the Captan fungicide in it. I was able to do all the roses (I didn’t spray the OGRs like Rembrant and Madame Hardy) in one batch (2 gallons). Seems to me that need to go get some more Orthonex to for next time.
The Caesar Chavez and Double Delight are currently going gangbusters. French Lace is also doing well as is the King of Hearts. However, many of my older roses are not producing as well as I would like. Maybe I need to fertilize them more.