Pink passalong roses from my Aunt Marjorie

Dear Dee and Mary Ann,

Don’t you wish you could close the garden gate and keep Time from marching on through it?

What happened to May?  It’s June, already, as we say every year at this time, and time for another Dear Friend and Gardener update on the vegetable garden. 

I always think of June as the month for roses, and just down a bit from my vegetable garden a large, rambling pink rose is blooming, right on schedule.

My Aunt Marjorie gave me this rose, a little start off of one of her roses. It was just an six inch tall stick when I planted it and now it is probably ten feet across and six feet high and owns its corner of the garden.

Many of the other shrub roses in my garden died back quite a bit after the cold winter we had. But this old rose had nary a tip of dead on it. It’s a strong rose and doesn’t seem to suffer from black spot or anything else. My only complaint about it, if I can be allowed one tiny complaint, is that any thistle which manages to grow at its base and up through its branches is home-free. There is no way I can reach over, around, or under this rose to pull out weeds.

Fortunately, only a few thistle even attempt to grow around this rose.

Out in my vegetable garden, it’s another story with the weeds. They grow with vigor but I am bound and determined that this year I’ll pull them while they are small.  I held to that determination today and weeded out every bed and then watered everything.

The most common weed in the vegetable garden is still purslane. Ghastly stuff. I know it is edible, but I’m not eating weeds.

I am eating strawberries and pea pods from the garden now and finishing up the last of the radishes, lettuce and spinach.  What’s left is bolting in the heat, sending up pretty flower stalks. I plan to pull them all this week and sow some green beans where they grew.

In another section of the garden, the green beans I sowed a few weeks are up and growing.  Thanks to my plastic fork fortresses, the rabbits are leaving them alone.

Do you like my rusty sign?  I bought it at a Master Gardeners education day a few years ago, when I was there to speak about vegetable gardens.   I like having it in the garden, to remind the rabbits whose garden it really is.  Between the sign and the forks, I am sure I’ve got it all covered. Ha!

I think by the time I write again for Dear Friend and Gardener, I should be picking shelling peas and will hopefully have planted seeds for zinnias, marigolds and sunflowers in the bed along the fence.  Just need for that Time to quit escaping out of the garden.

Hortifully,
Carol

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