I have a lot of rose books, mostly so I can see what I may want to plant or wish I once had.
Now most are left over from mom, some of the really old ones, and cut and paste literature, are fascinating as one can see what was once there and how tastes or styles have changed.
Now mom passed five years ago and while I have maintained the garden, the spark sort of went out and I have not replaced a defunct rose there since she died. Approx. half have died, some were very old and I knew years before she died they were on a permanent downhill road.
Well this coming year I am going to put more effort into the garden. I had already cut the size in half, which made spring uncovering time shrink from five to six hours to two to three, and am going to relocate the roses so they are more visible from the road rather than out the window mom looked out of in her later years.
The ornery thing is if I put in a rose I do not like, it is immune to darn near anything that would kill it, so I sit there speaking in a loud voice --die you sob -- and it keeps on truckin.
I will not kill a rose for that reason but the majority of the approx. several dozen roses I tend to in two garden are not the ones I really like.
Mom's garden is fifty miles from the other one and since I quit taking advice from, the woman, who got advice from her beauty shop clients, survival rate there has greatly increased even it averages ten degrees colder up there.
I like hybrid-tea roses and books dealing with them are not from north country gardens, as the information on how to deal with winters is at best lacking, often admittedly by the writer.
Are there any current books concentrating on hybrid-tea roses, even if the writer is north country naïve?
I have grown and still have some floribunda and grandiflora but those are the only types I also grow or would put back in.
I will have to go down south and spend a day just browsing through mom's books to see what I have but a new book never hurts.
