APRIL SHOWERS!

April showers bring May flowers!  Let that please be the truth!  It is raining here, a good steady soaking rain which anything growing in my yard is going to need because the soil in the flowerbeds around my house is bone dry - or it was yesterday!

I did get on my knees for about a couple of hours yesterday, working in the south facing rose garden.  I have six roses that have black rot, and I think they are gone - but I have left them for now.  I admit I know very little about growing roses, so if anyone has anything to share on this matter - please do.

Then I moved over to the other rose bushes in an adjacent bed.  These have fared much better, but then they are still well buried in quack at the roots. I spent an hour clearing the quack away from yet one more rose bush, and as you can see there is hope for this one, at least.  

 I am making progress, just have this quack left and then I will have completed this bed.

This is back-breaking and time-taking work.  On most of the bed I just dug it out with a garden fork, but here in the roses I have to pull and clean it by hand.  The quack root system is entwined with the roses and it is tedious work.  That one rose bush took almost an hour to clean around.

I have to say, even though I dislike quack with a passion - I do enjoy being out there on my hands and knees on a warm spring day, digging in the earth, finding treasures like the tiniest snake skull, listening to the Gold Finches and the Robins singing for all the world to hear, and talking to the plants.

Oh the things I tell them!

In yesterday's case there were apologies given, and promises made.  I am one who believes that plants respond to communication through speech.  I have heard so many people say that I can grow anything, or that I have a green thumb - not true at all folks.

A lot of the time I am the most ignorant of gardeners - but what I lack in knowledge, I make up for in love of the beauty that I might be encouraging; patience - which isn't always easy; and speech - I always talk to my plants - whether they be indoors or outside in the garden.

If there be a secret to growing things - that would be mine!

I can hear the rain pounding on the roof now - so I guess it is safe to say the rain has changed to a downpour.  Don't really need that much water - but it is what it is.  Spring IS here, and I have proof...

Tomato's, Rhubarb, Tulips, and I think Echinacea that was just a root when I found it tangled in some quack I pulled a few weeks ago - I knew the root was something other than quack, but didn't know what it might be until I potted it and it grew to a leaf I could recognize -  now I know....  A perennial saved!  Wonder what colour it will be when it grows up?

I also have lavender, Rosemary and Lemon Balm growing in pots - and ginger, from that little nub that started all on it's own...

So let the rains come - then let the grass grow green and tall, and the flowers stretch to the sun and produce beautiful blooms... and leave the dandelions of spring for our bees - they need this first food of spring - some wildflowers waving in the wind wouldn't hurt them either -