Henny Penny Farmette

The Abbaye de Cluny rose has dinner plate-size roses

Roses are among the most romantic flowers in a garden. I grow dozens of cultivars of rose bushes–climbers, hybrid teas, floribundas,  and polyanthas. When I have an extra few dollars, I might spend it on a rose bush, but when money is tight, I simply start a new bush from one of my favorites that I’m currently growing.

Climbing Sally Holmes has scampered up a ten-foot fence

My husband and I love the climbers. We have tall fences (over six feet) around our property on all sides. Covering an entire fence is easy when you use a vigorous, virtually pest-free climber. Two roses that quickly adapt and grow to fantastic heights are Sally Holmes and Cecile Brunner.

Climbing roses need strong support, since some canes can reach forty feet or more as they scramble over a roof or stone wall, trellis, fence, or arbor.

Last year, my husband created a rose arbor on wires strung from the fence along the north side of our house to the roof line. He planted the Cecile Brunner rose as his climber of choice. Its sage green leaves make a lovely foil for the tiny pink roses that permeate the air with a spicy-sweet scent throughout the spring. Cutting and feeding will render another bloom in summer.

My garden has plenty of places where I could tuck in a new rose bush, and I’ve bought many over the years. I have some favorites that I’d like to start in other areas. They include A Shropshire Lad, Handel, Lady Banks (a thornless yellow rose), and Iceberg.

Climbing Handel flourishes in full sun on a sturdy support

This is the perfect time to propagate roses from cuttings in the Bay Area since the rose bushes in many yards are beginning to awaken. Roses require water, something no longer plentiful in California. Thanks to a severe four-year drought, we now have mandatory water restrictions. That means we gardeners must consider how we can recycle water, use gray water, collect water, and otherwise find ways to reduce water usage.

A Shropshire Lad is a David Austin climbing rose that looks splendid alone or with other roses

To propagate a rose from your favorite bush, take a six-inch cutting from a healthy cane. Make the bottom cut a sharp angle cut, not straight across. Do not crush the stem. Remove the leaves.

Dip the angle cut into a jar of root hormone powder. This powder enables the cane to root more easily in the ground or pot.

Insert the prepared cutting in the soil. Water as needed when the soil is dry. The cutting will need one to two months to root and then, it will begin to leaf out.

Some people like to put a quart jar over their cutting to create a mini-green house climate. In mild climates like the Bay Area, this isn’t necessary. The best time to propagate cuttings from your favorite roses is in the spring and never in extremes of cold or heat.

Creating romance in the garden could start with a table and chairs, floral-motif linens, and a service of tea. But even before those accoutrements to romance are added, why not fill the space with roses? It’s so easy.

Cecile Brunner forms an arch over a statue of the Virgin Mary in one of the prettiest and most peaceful areas of my garden

The lovely Cecile Brunner rose that serves as the anchor for a small meditation garden on the northwest side of my little farmhouse suddenly appears yellowed, leafless, and lifeless. Honest to goodness, she looks like she’s croaked. It’s certainly a strange turn of events, since she had numerous new canes and the leaves were shiny and healthy only a week ago.

There is a small eruption of new dirt nearby–suggestive of moles (insect eaters) and gophers (vegetarians) and maybe voles–(voles eat roots but  don’t leave mounds). So my rose problem might actually be two-fold–either way–it’s underground.

I could dig and back fill those tunnels with dirt and maybe I should. I’ve heard you can break a leg stepping into a gopher hole and I’m not talking livestock here. I wonder if the vole and gopher are sharing a network of tunnels down there dead-ending in the gopher’s bunker.
I gave the poor rose a big drink of water as soon as I discovered her condition, not knowing what else to do. As I stood there, watering with hose in hand, I saw the earth around the rose’s root cave in. Seriously?

So I’m thinking there must be a one heck of a big tunnel. This is war! I decide to stick the hose right into the tunnel and fill it with as much water as that hole will hold . . . and then some.

You might expect purple iris to bloom around Easter but in late October?

Strangely, while I’m dealing with the rose problem, I look past the fresh dirt mound and notice that one of the Dutch purple irises in a bed of a hundred or more has broken into full bloom. What gives? Those beauties normally bloom around Easter. I wonder why the voles haven’t attacked the rhizomes of the irises.

The condition of the Cecile Brunner climbing rose breaks my heart. Maybe she’ll spring back to life to bloom again next spring. For now, I’ll clip the beautiful iris and tuck it into a vase with some roses from other bushes on the farmette.  That done, I’ll put an all-out effort into finding out  how to get rid of those underground buck-tooth bandits . . . for good. Feel free to leave me your ideas. I’ve tried almost everything I’ve read on the Internet.

Robins are the quintessential backyard bird

One of my favorite ways to relax is birdwatching. And nothing entertains me more than seeing an orange-breasted robin hopping around on the lawn and then halting at a full stop with its head cocked as if listening for an earthworm, as if the worms telegraphed their presence. I mean seriously. But somehow, those robins will find the worms and pull them right out of the ground.

When winter is nearing its close and spring is beginning, the robins are one of the first harbingers of the seasonal transition. In the spring, when other backyard birds are nesting and producing young, the robins are, too. But even though it is possible for them to produce three broods each year, less than half (40 percent) of their nests will hold baby robins.

Of the young robins that hatch, only about a quarter of them will make it to November each year. And as if that weren’t bad enough, of the robins that make it through a full year, only half will survive through a second year. And yet, robins can live to the ripe old age of 14 if it were not for predators and pesticides.

Robin nest tucked into a Cecile Brunner polyantha climbing rose

With the odds against these sweet birds’ survival, you’d think most people would not spray the daylights out of their lawns with pesticides and herbicides. These chemicals are toxic to the robins as well as other birds and, of course, the beleaguered honeybee.

Robins find lawns to be wonderful sites for foraging and I often see them searching and snatching the earthworms in the early morning. Later in the day, these cheerful birds seem to prefer fruit and honeysuckle berries. If you don’t see them, you might hear their cheery song crisp and clear, even over urban noise.

During certain times of the year,  you might see the robins in greater numbers than at other times, but that doesn’t mean they’ve gone far. They are either resident birds, meaning they stay close to their breeding area or are short-distance migrants. The local conditions (environmental, weather, water and food availability, predator populations, and other factors) dictate the size of the robin population in at any given time in a particular area.

If you love birds as I do, less fussing over your lawn (except to encourage the worms) might mean having having more robins around. Consider ways to establish a healthy ecological balance in your yard and garden to avoid spraying with chemicals that can poison these cheerful fun-to-watch birds.