Next door's roses

Luckily the folks next door enjoy gardening as they have a very big garden with very long hedges.

These spendid roses are on their drive just outside their front door.

Roses

We have a pot of roses out on our patio. The colour is lovely. I am not sure how long they will look good.

Roses

Our roses are out early this year. Daffodils were late, but things suddenly seemed to speed up in the last month. This lovely rose is in our front garden where it gets plenty of sun. This year, my wife did the pruning.

Rose pruning time

This afternoon, as it was bright and sunny, I decided to prune the roses at the front of our bungalow. There have been several flushes of roses with the last one at Christmas. I pruned them back heavily last winter and this was obviously the right thing to do. There are those who advocate careful trimming back to just above the growing points and others who advocate simply slashing them back. I am somewhere in between.   It probably depends on the rose type. Anyway, they are now pruned and the proof will come with the new growth.

A walk to the local baker and local butcher this afternoon was good for the walk in the cold January sunshine, but both closed at lunch on Saturday, so I came back empty-handed!

Autumn is here.

After a good and long summer, the rain band came through yesterday and the temperature has dropped some 6-8 degrees. It now feels like autumn has arrived. The temperature mid-afternoon was 15 deg C. Before the rain band it was in the low 20's Centigrade.

Roses - Oct 5th 2014

Our roses by the front door are now in their 3rd flush with plenty of buds. The cosmos (LHS) still look good although the sweet peas in the back garden are now coming to an end: we have been cutting these since the end of June for the kitchen table.

Greenfly on roses - grandson

http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advice/ACEImages/RHS_PUB0003259roseaphids_562901.JPG

Just before going back to Kent yesterday, our 5 year old grandson helped Granny spray the roses with soapy water to help reduce greenfly numbers. This is a tried and tested technique we have used before.

We heard that,  as soon as they got home, our grandson was in THEIR garden checking THEIR roses for greenfly! Of course, he found some and wanted to spray them.

See http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?pid=697