A Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet...

A week away from the End of the Rainbow Valley adding in some heat and a lot of rainfall make for a lot of weeding. Sometimes the weeding job is so overwhelming it's difficult to know where to begin. Well I had extra incentive this week...

What encouraged me to tackle this particular task has to do with this photo. Isn't this the loveliest rose? Natureman had cut and brought in this sweet small bouquet. 

I had totally forgotten hidden in the grasses in front of the chicken coop flower bed was this rose transplant given to me by Cousin Charlotte from Milwaukee some 12 years ago. The rose plant stays relatively small and only has a couple blooms/year but they are always so beautiful. Cousin Charlotte spent endless hours keeping  an immaculate yard and pristine garden border unlike yours truly with our "natural" country look.  

If seeing that rose wasn't enough guilt and encouragement to tackle that small flower bed and save the rose from being choked out.

With the coop bed being so overgrown with grasses and weeds it was really easier to pull especially after a recent rainfall.  Isn't it funny how grass always grows where you don't want it to grow?  

An hour and half later I could actually see some color besides green.  Hey, there were those zinnias, cosmos, nicotiana, salvia and bachelor button seed I had planted looking quite healthy. The mint was thinned AND the goats were most appreciative of all the pulled grass as they could just stand in one place and eat my piles. I am not quite finished as I ran out of steam. I'll definitely get back to weeding more of that bed today.

Thanks Natureman for bringing in Cousin Charlotte's rose and with it special memories of her love of gardening...