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The Charlie Brown Rosebush

Blooming Rose

The rosebush right in front of my living room window bloomed this great peachish-coral color back in early June. The flowers were gorgeous, if a bit bespeckled with purple weirdness… and many of the leaves looked sickly and spotted.

Blackspot, I Presume?

A week later, the rose bloomed again, this time in yellow. The canes were so thin and spindly that the blooms were drooping pitifully, so I deadheaded most of them and brought the most beautiful inside (on a very short stem).

Yellow Rose in the Kitchen

It was then that I decided I needed to do something about this rosebush. The other bushes on my property seemed to be surviving the neglect of the past few years — their former caretaker having passed away — but this one caught my attention as needing some TLC.

I did some online research about rose pruning during the growing season, and found Paul Zimmerman’s YouTube channel. From his videos, I learned what tools I would need, and I purchased them on Amazon.

The day they arrived, I set to work.
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gardening, video 1 Comment

How Does Your Garden Grow? Part 1: These Damn Weeds

I had finally finished weeding the back side of the fence out front on Friday evening (yeah, that’s my idea of a fun Friday night out) when I realized how many more weeds I had yet to pull. So, in a fit of frustration, and with no advance planning (i.e. no makeup and no script), I pulled out my iPhone and started filming. The idea was to post a quick and dirty video that night and not have to spend time writing copy and editing photos and all that. Couple quick cuts and done.

Alas, the video editing software I’d been using on my old computer (it’s been quite a while since I tried to edit video) doesn’t work with my 64-bit processor. I then spent the rest of the evening seeking out a better free video editor than Windows Movie Maker, which kind of defeated my original quick-and-dirty-post idea. I ended up going with WMM, anyway, since the one relatively powerful tool I found has a bit of a learning curve to it.

So, this is my attempt at a little video blog series entitled, “How Does Your Garden Grow?” (Just like dozens of other gardening websites and resources, yes, I know. Best title I could come up with on relatively short notice. I’m not usually so spontaneous.)

As a postscript to the video, I realized that I’m going about weeding all wrong. I need to go out with the Preen and put it down immediately, not wait until some time after I’ve weeded. Otherwise, all the weeds I just pulled will have shaken off their seeds and already started to take hold again.

Next up: pruning my roses! My loppers and bypass shears arrive from Amazon tomorrow, so, assuming that I feel up to it tomorrow after the toddler goes to bed, I’ll be outside documenting the pruning of one or more of my rosebushes.

I never thought I’d have a singular rosebush I didn’t manage to kill, much less the four or five that are on this property. It’s gorgeous here… if I can keep everything under control.

family, house 1 Comment

10th Wedding Anniversary Weekend!

Had I taken more photos, I would have liked to have made this post less wordy and more photo-heavy. As it is, I got so caught up in, well, enjoying myself that I forgot to snap pics until halfway through Saturday’s fun.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. First, there was…

Friday – Our Actual 10th Wedding Anniversary

I took the day off of work, partially because it was my anniversary, but partially because the parking garage downtown was going to be closed that day for construction, and I didn’t feel like dealing with the hassle of parking in another garage. My initial thought had been that we could spend the afternoon at the Toledo Zoo.

Silly me.
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