Shhhhh.....

Can you hear it? Off in the distance, what is that? It sounds like ... drums? He, he, he...

"Distant Drums" is pretty much perfection right about now. It currently has two of the biggest, most colorful, delicious smelling blooms. When they first started to open, the sweetness was so concentrated they smelled like candy. Mmmmm.....

"Honeysweet", on the other hand, isn't feeling so well. The canes have some pretty bad winter damage and a lot of the leaves are looking a little ragged. I pruned her back pretty hard this week.

It just so happens that this weekend at Great Lakes Roses, Roger Lindley gave a talk on Insect and Disease Control. Swell! So I chopped off a few sickly leaves and headed down, hoping he wouldn't tell me my rose is doomed. Diagnosis = rose slugs. No big whoop.

I managed to exercise a bit of self control this time and didn't come home with any new roses (unlike a few weeks ago, after the Buck Roses talk when "Quietness" and "Aunt Honey" managed to jump into my car). I did spot some new roses to add to my wish list - "Iobelle", another Buck rose, and "Fireglow", a Canadian Parkland (Morden) rose. Dare to dream.