It was sunny on Friday!

It was originally supposed to be rainy, so I took the opportunity to clean up the front garden a bit.  This involved pruning the out of control rose bush/tree.  As far as I know, we haven't pruned it in 8 years and the bush was pretty wild when we got here, so I don't know when if ever it was pruned.  I know it is in the worst possible location for a rose.  Wrong soil, bad direction facing, poor drainage.  I think I improved it some, adding some potting soil (hey it's what I had) which isn't really soil, and miracle grow and mulch, because in the last 2 years it really grew.  One branch reached the second floor windows.

Now as some of you know, the big orange box, eliminated my job in February, so I took another job with them  (hey 5 weeks paid vacation & 6 personal days every year is tough to give up) in the Garden dept.  I spent a lot of time the last half of February taking the online classes they'd make me take anyway starting March 1st ( that way I wasn't stuck taking them for 6-7 hours in a day) One of the classes was on roses, and how to prune the different kind of roses. I'm still not 100% sure which type of rose it is but I have it narrowed down to 2 types that have similar pruning needs.  So armed with this, and my clippers and loppers I headed out.  I really should have taken 2 of the main canes off, but I didn't want to.  I moved my short useless black hook (anything I hang off it touches the ground wtf? ) to try and convince one of the canes that it would rather be there than rubbing another one.  If it doesn't stay, one of the 2 will have to be cut.

I don't have a picture of the before- I can probably find one from before - but here is the after.  It is 6 feet shorter now than when I started.:



The one dead cane in the center needs to be cut with a saw.  It's over 2" in diameter.  Also, I learned something not in the class (well it was sort of - they suggested at the end of class if you help a customer with this to suggest a pair of leather/suede as opposed to fabric garden gloves) I wore no gloves.  The rose fought back.

I looked at the vertical garden box we made last spring and while I am not 100% sure what succulents are supposed to look like through the winter- none of them look dead.  As a matter of fact the 2 red ones on the bottom corners seem to be spreading to the soil below.



Last year I cut the Montauk daisies down to the ground at Christmas time, and they usually start growing back starting in June.  So when I went to cut them down, I noticed that leaves were growing back on the bottom of the stems.  I did NOT learn about this in any of the garden classes.  So I cut the dead stems off above the leaf growth.  So now they look like this:




Mind you - I'M TERRIBLE  at pruning.  My friend Paul says to look at it as giving the plant a haircut.  I see it more like amputating an extremity.  I am working on it.  


I have a lot of bulbs coming up:





And I have a flower!!