I Met Paul James

I met Paul James (only the greatest gardening guru ever) yesterday at the Greater Montgomery Home and Garden Show. Well, I saw him and attended his Q&A segment more than met him. But I got to ask him a question. Yay me!

Here's my problem...I'm trying to establish several rose gardens in my yard, but failing quite miserably. I have several varities - some engineered to withstand any condition, buy all the recommended fertilizers, soil amendments, they get the right amount of water and are planted in the right light, yet, if I don't deadhead a rose the nanosecond a petal turns, the entire branch dies. The tree itself is fine, but the branch is a goner. More often than not, I have more dead branches than healthy ones, with occassional healthy looking blooms. So what did my highly esteemed gardening hero answer? "I'm stumped." That's it? He's stumped? I traveled more than an hour for this? In my mind, Paul James was losing points big time.

He then went on the explain it doesn't sound fungal, viral or bacterial. It's probably pathological. He further recommended I send a few cutlings to the plant pathologist at Auburn to figure out what's going on. How dedicated am I to this task, when a very attractive alternative is to dig them up and replace them with any number of flowering bushes I do very well with? VERY! I love roses and damn it, I want to be surrounded with beautiful rose bushes.

So presents a terrific opportunity to blog about my rose gardening adventures this year. I'll show you pics of the before and after and keep you updated along the way. And hopefully by late summer, I'll adorn every horizontal surface in my home with rose arrangements (much to my husband's chagrin I'm sure).

Here's to everything Roses. Cheers!