2:08 p.m. - 2002-09-03
Extreme Gardening
Where is Simon when I need her? All day today there has been the most outrageous stick bug on our front door. We're talking seven-and-a-half inches of lifestyle here! (I measured.)
Yep, there is a 7 1/2 inch stick bug on my front door, and he's evidently not going anywhere. Unlike the smaller green ones I saw a couple of weeks ago, he's dark brown, and I can't figure out which is the top and which is the bottom of him. I guess that's the point - he just looks like a big stick.
The best part is that since our outer front door is glass I can see his underside, too. 360 degrees of stickbug viewing!
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It's 94 degrees outside, yet I'm wearing long sleeves and long pants. On my hands are leather gauntlets that go up past my elbows. I have safety glasses, and my hair is tied up in a knot. In a bin next to me I have every garden tool imaginable, from long handled loppers to needle nose pliers. When I'm not swearing quietly under my breath I'm trying to remember the words to "Chatanooga Choo Choo".
This, my friends, is Extreme Gardening.
I'm pruning the Dr. Van Fleet rose bushes, which evidently haven't seen a set of pruning shears for a good ten years. They are huge rose bushes, at their bases they are a good seven inches around, but half of their canes are dead. The other half are about eight feet long and only have leaves on the last foot. So I've taken it upon myself, on this blastingly hot day, to prune the hell out of them.
I know, I know, it's not a good time of year to prune roses. I should wait till spring. But we still have at least two more warm months and the Van Fleet's are desperate.
I love these roses. I loved them when I first saw them bloom in March - they have frosting pink blooms that smell classically rosey - and I especially loved them when I found out what variety they were. Dr. Van Fleet - it sounds like they were named for a compatriot of Ahmed Fishmonger, no?
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