sunshine
You don’t know how much sunshine means to roses, they make do without anything else if they have eight hours of full sun exposure a day. I remember from my early gardening days watching with wretched covetousness an abandoned rose bush that somebody planted in an empty corner and forgot about.
Nobody watered it or treated it for the never ending list of rose diseases (which they only get, by the way, if they don’t have enough sunlight), and in the absence of pruning it grew tall, almost like a little tree. It was literally weighed down by flowers, so many they didn’t fit on the branches, and scented the air around it effortlessly, as if to spite me.
I, of course, was doting on my rose, using an entire arsenal of nutrients, fungicides, insect repellants, and watering it the second the dirt around it dried up. Late in the season it sprung a little bud, delicate and hanging on to a very flimsy stem and then black spot got rid of all its foliage, leaving it barren and vulnerable.
Whoever says roses are difficult planted them in the wrong spot. They just need sunshine, is all. The cheerful drop of happiness in the picture is Crown Princess Margareta whom I almost gave up on but decided to move at the last minute, when its dried up canes made a last effort of springing forth new growth.
It is supposed to be extremely disease resistant and bloom with abandon repeatedly throughout the summer. I’m looking forward to that.
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