I Never Promised You A Rose Garden

And yet I suddenly have one.  A big one.

Last Monday I took the day off to transplant roses.  It was part of a bigger plan.

When we bought the house, there were raised flower beds in front of the house.

Unfortunately, the bed on the left was allowing water to get into the house and the floorboards were rotting out in the front closet.  We took that one out two years ago.  The one on the right is causing the bricks on the porch to spall. That’s this summer’s project.

So, as long as I’m planning to take out the raised flower bed, why not address the brick walkway right in front of it? It was getting crooked, and it was too narrow to be really useful. I took that out after supper one night the other week.

And, as long as both the walkway and the raised bed were gonners, why not remove the grass in the front yard and make a big garden?

Because it’s a bigger job than we cared to take on, that’s why.

Hey, when has that ever stopped us?

So, I scaled it back to removing just half of the lawn on the right hand side this summer, along with getting rid of the raised bed and the walkway.  Next summer I was planning to address the upper half of the left side of the front. I was planning to move  a few roses from the back yard (where I never got to see them) to the front yard where I could enjoy them more.  They needed to be moved before they started growing, so I took Monday off to move them.  Before noon Matt and I had dug 6 holes and moved 6 roses.  And another two holes for hydrangeas that came out of the raised flower bed.  That felt like a full day’s work.

I mentioned something about moving roses at work.  A co-worker volunteered that he’d dug three roses out of his backyard over the weekend and didn’t want to just throw them out, but had no other use for them.  Swell, I said, I can find a home for them.  I thought 3 more would be great – not a lot of work, after having moved all the other stuff on Monday.

Then Saturday morning the owner of the rental across the street started digging stuff out of the front yard of that house.  Roses.  We volunteered to take them if he didn’t have a use for them.  He told Matt he’d bring over three at some point in the day.  So, 6 new roses for free.  Nice. I’d just plant them sometime Saturday afternoon while Matt watched the kids.

Except that once the guy across the street dug up his roses, they were three clumps of three bushes.  9 all together. So, with the co-worker’s, there were 12 roses to transplant.

That was a lot of work.  And now the whole yard on the right side is dug up and has roses.  And there are a bunch on the left side, too.  Pictures to follow when my arms recover.