Introduction

This is my first post.  I’ve taken the name for my blog - Touching the Past - from my love of everything vintage and antique.  In the interest of disclosure, I have an Etsy shop by that name where I sell vintage and antique items and also jewelry items I make with vintage buttons, charms and findings – but more on that later.  ;-)

I live in Mississippi which, for anyone who doesn’t know, can be pretty unbearable in the summer. This past summer was particularly hot and humid.  One of my passions - borne of my desire to have a yard which doesn’t need mowing – is flowers and in particular, antique roses.  This summer I couldn’t bring myself to stay outside long enough to maintain my flowers or beds. So, the weeds were rampant and the flowers were few. I gave up on watering, too.

THE FINE ART OF PRUNING

When I first started planting roses, I read everything possible about their care. The pruning aspect scared me because of all the “rules” about what you should and shouldn’t do.  Not only did it seem to require a lot of skill, it sounded like a lot of hard work. So every year in the spring, I spend several days carefully removing canes growing in the wrong direction and those that are dead and those that are thinner than a pencil, removing leaves, and trying to cut above a bud that faces outward. It IS hard work, especially when you have more than 100 roses to deal with.  And the cleanup after pruning the roses is even worse.

Then, during the summer, I try to prune several times, because that keeps the roses blooming and healthy. However, this year – because of the heat – I neglected my roses along with everything else outside. Near the end of the summer on a day when the temperature rose only to 90, I ran outside and trimmed all the roses off with hedge clippers as if they were shrubs. I had never done that before and I was very worried about the result but boy, did everything look neat when I finished.

CRAZY WITH JOY

So finally, fall – such as it is – arrived in Mississippi. And much to my surprise, my roses went crazy with joy.  I’m not sure if the clipping I did had anything to do with it or if they were responding to the cooler weather, but I’ve never had another fall bloom as occurred this year. Needless to say, I’ll be treating my roses as shrubs in the future. If they keep responding as they did this year, I’ll be crazy with joy too.

Fall roses

More fall roses

Fall asters