Here is the problem child.
Whatever am I going to do with her?
Until his passing in December of 2008 my father always cared for the lawn. He passed away during the night following a Christmas dedicated to him which featured his meating his only great-grandchild, my granddaughter.
He would mow with a riding mower, burned leaves and clippings, rarely ran the weed eater, and used the walk behind mower rarely. The yard was his domain and gave him something to do. I took over the yard upon his passing and now my front yard is the greenest yard in town without irrigation. I reseeded the bare spots and that allowed the Bermuda grass to move in. I water throughly whenever we go without rain for a week, cut it weekly with a three inch height, mulch everything including the leaves each fall, and edge in most areas after each cut.
My mother cared for the flower beds, but she never had much luck. Last May I decided to try my hand at growing flowers. I have two flower beds. One only gets a few hours of sunlight due to a large tree just south of it. I planted Begonias, Dianthas (Pinks), and Snapdragons last year. The Begonias didn't survive the winter and the Snapdragons have problems during the hot summer of far North-East Texas. The Dianthas thrived and I plan to fill the bed with those just prior to next Spring.
My other bed gets a lot more sun and I hope it will become a 50 square foot rose bed in the next few years. I started with three new plants and two plants mother had which weren't producing since they were in the shady bed. Within 6 weeks of planting and fertilizing the Rose bed, I had flowers.
Here is the grandmother of this years Big Beauty.
Big Beauty was the first Rose I had this year. But the bush hasn't produced any since then.
The right side of the bed has Tyler Roses and produces regular bunches.
The left hand bush is on the corner and is the first to get sun each day.
Last year she produced multiple smaller blooms in bunches.
She has repeated that pattern this year.
She has already went through four bloom cycles with ten to twelve blooms each cycle.
She is currently at the start of the next cycle which might be the best yet.
We have had the bush next to her for years and it rarely produced anything.
Last year I got a few single rose growths.
I just cut her second single bloom of the year back.
The center bush of the five has produced a few single blooms this year and last.
But she totally surprised me in the last two weeks.
A new Trunk shot up from the ground and went straight up 4 feet before producing a single large bloom.
Now I have a new four foot trunk, but I don't want my bushes to get any taller than that. My long term goal is to have the bed full of rose bushes. But I don't want it to be that tall. The rest of the bushes in the bed only have canes which extend to three foot or less overall height from which sprouts fresh growth and new stems where the roses end up at four foot or so. I usually cut those back when the pedals starts to fall off.
What do you think of my overall scheme? How far do you think I should cut the new trunk back?