It seems like just yesterday I was wishing for the warmer weather to get here to warm up the warehouse and now it is mid July! Summers seem to go by faster and faster every year the older I get. We are now right smack in the middle of summer and my goal is to enjoy and appreciate every day we have left this summer. This year in my front garden I planted roses for the first time at the suggestion of my wife. At first I thought roses are way above my gardening pay grade I don’t know the first thing about caring for roses, between the pruning and fertilizing. I was sure I would kill them within a week and would have wasted $50. Thank God for You Tube videos along with talking to some friends that said just plant the roses and they will grow. I found out that if you have a garden with full sun and know how to dig a hole and water you can plant and grow roses [not as complicated as I thought]. Then I remembered I was growing my homemade dirt / compost, surely my compost in the bottom of the hole would guarantee healthy roses. So a month ago I planted two Knock-Out Rose bushes and I told myself if they lived for 2 weeks I would buy a third bush to fill in my garden. To my complete surprise they both lived and I was very proud of myself, so I bought and planted that 3rd bush. Now I did tell my wife I would have no problem growing roses but honestly I had my doubts. At the same time I planted the roses I put together a solar water fountain right next to the roses. What the hell my confidence and gardening stock were way up and my “little gardening voice” kept telling me to go for it. The solar pump was $10 bucks and the pot from Home Depot was $49 on sale so for less than $60 I had a garden fountain. Any idiot can plant roses [as I found out] but a solar fountain takes a special idiot and gives me street cred!
To round out my landscape / garden design I planted daisies on each end of the roses to balance the color. At this point I was on fire with my landscaping design ideas and was clearly ready to start my own landscape design company. I wish I had a before picture of the garden but trust me this is a big improvement over the boxwoods that were in the garden before. I am so proud of my little garden it may not look like much now but wait till next year, when all the plants mature and grow in. I now had to do some more homework with respect to caring and pruning for my new Knock-Out Roses. I learned about “dead heading” [thanks to You Tube] or pruning your rose blooms down to the steam with 5 leafs. That seemed easy enough I know how to count to five and use pruning shears. So I started pruning or dead heading my roses to insure new growth, I of course put The Dead’s American Beauty on my iPod while dead heading just to capture the irony. I am sure I went too far at first but again like a bad hair cut roses will grow back. Then I found a caring for your rose’s video that suggested adding Epson Salts to your roses as a base fertilizer. You should have seen the look on the girls face at CVS when I asked her for Epson Salts to fertilize my roses she thought I was crazy.
Nonetheless, about a week after the first pruning and adding Epson Salts I had a lot of new growth on my roses. I was now ready for the competitive rose growing circuit and to win the national rose off [I am not sure that is a thing but I am ready]. My neighbor Paul thinks I have lost my mind and that I have been spending too much time out in the sun. Paul now calls me “Farmer Bill” between the composting, wild flowers, decorative grasses and new roses. Wait till Paul sees the new solar fountain I am working on the one in the picture is fountain 1.0, 2.0 will be a combination bird bath and fountain! Maybe Paul is right but what the hell I am enjoying the projects.
The funny thing is that my father loved working in the garden he never grew anything like roses or vegetables but he was always outside weeding or doing something. Maybe he was just getting away from Mom I don’t know but it sure made him happy. Seeing my planting designs / layout come to life is very satisfying and fulfilling in a strange way and I now understand my father’s pleasure in gardening. Gardening is a form of enlightenment and self realization and that was the inspiration for my Buddha / wild flower garden. I took an old Buddha painted it red and planted wild flowers from seed behind it and then used solar tulips on either side to light up the garden at night. The wild flowers will grow all summer and the Buddha is a great color contrast to the flowers and when I walk by the garden I appreciate the summer as well as my hard work. This week I ordered 2 additional solar multi color flood lights to put on the roses and the Buddha, the lights are the cherry on top and make the garden look great at night!
Gardening has taught me to take a step back and to look around and appreciate the flowers, the colors and the beauty of what God has given me. Five years ago I would have been making tee times and paying a landscaper to work in my yard. Today I am making compost, planting roses, wild flowers and painting Buddha’s. Gardening has become a substitute for golf and the country club lifestyle that I once enjoyed. I find gardening a lot less frustrating then golf and more satisfying than trying to hit a little ball where I want it go with a metal stick. Although I miss playing golf with the boyz I have found a new sense of relaxation and fulfillment, maybe one day I will be able to join a country club again and enjoy golfing while looking forward to gardening on my off days. It is so true that when God closes one door in your life he opens a new door to a great looking garden.
