Winter provides the opportunity to dream, plan, and order your roses now for shipping at a later date. Don’t forget to budget for things like mulch, pots, potting soil, garden soil, pruners, and other garden tools you may need. In just a little over nine weeks, it will be officially Spring!
Looking for something relaxing and educational to watch? This free documentary on YouTube known as “Rose, Queen of Flowers” provides excellent information about the rose. Like me, you may learn something new!
~ Oseh Shalom – Plant Peace ~
A Garden-Themed Prayer
by C. Renee Turner
Adonai Tzva’ot (LORD of Hosts/Armies), may You uproot and forever compost antisemitism.
Adonai Tsidkenu (LORD of Righteousness), You prune us, producing and arranging fragrant, vivacious blooms of righteousness.
El Roi (The God Who Sees), nurture and repurpose precious, fallen petals.
Shekhinah (Dwelling Presence of God), plant permeating peace in all souls. May everywhere we are planted become holy ground.
El Shaddai (God Almighty), hedge Your chosen, eternal garden – Yisrael.
Avinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King), forgive us for the days we took for granted – Adon Olam; forgive us for missed opportunities to plant peace in one another, in Yisrael, and beyond.
Elyon (God Most High), hear us; heal us. Oseh Shalom. Plant Peace.
The below rendition of Oseh Shalom by Elana Arian plants peace within my soul.
The lyrics from Hebrew liturgy:
Oseh shalom bimromav
Hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu
V’al kol Yisrael
V’imru Amen.
Translation:
He who makes peace in high places,
He will make peace for us
And for all Israel
And let us say, Amen.
Despite the oppressive August heat, along fences and trellises throughout my new garden located in Maryland 7b, three different clematis vines bloom. Next year, they, along with my roses, lavender, and other flowers, should pop with vibrant complementary colors!
Here’s a peak…
As the plants prosper and acclimate, there should be plenty of photo opportunities to capture the clematis and roses highlighting each other’s beauty like good friends or perhaps like a summer romance or eternal flame often do. 😉
Bring out the best in others! Highlight beautiful character in those planted near you. Be complementary! Be ever-blooming.
After living on a sailboat for a few years, I thought it appropriate to plant a floribunda rose marketed as ‘Ebb Tide’. She’s only been growing a few weeks in my garden located in Maryland Zone 7b, but already she profusely blooms in clusters of evolving purple. Surrounded by mini nuggets of pine bark, her petals exude a lovely fragrance and she fends off disease with ease. ‘Ebb Tide’ is a stunning, simple choice for your garden.
Follow for more rose photography and gardening content. In the meantime, may we all choose to be ‘ever-blooming’.
Carrie Renee Turner
Throughout this glorious Spring, which recently transitioned to Summer, I have enjoyed designing a garden full of flourishing blooms at my new home in Maryland, Zone 7b. I’ve added a few flower beds that several roses call home while fuzzy lamb’s ears and purple bursts of lavender are nestled nearby. One said rose, a floribunda, known as ‘Intrigue’ boasts wine colored velvet petals. Her intriguing beauty and delightful fragrance keeps me coming back for more! She briefly displayed slight blackspot, but her foliage appears to be quite disease resistant thus far. Intrigue’s prolific blooms, stunning color, delectable fragrance, and vibrant, healthy leaves has me intrigued. This impulse, Mother’s Day purchase made at Stauffer’s Kissel nursery in York, PA has been a joy. An ever-blooming rose indeed!
–Carrie Renee Turner
The most wonderful time of the year is rapidly approaching — just four weeks till Spring!
Yesterday, I purchased two large container pots and organic potting soil as well as fertilizer for my roses. I have three different roses arriving in the coming weeks plus one already well-established in my new yard. I purchased this home over the winter months and am anxious to see what prior owners have planted. Once I make note of the colors that pop up, I can better design the garden. Until then, I will likely plant the roses in pots though until I can commit to a garden design. Thus far, I am thinking of a cottage-style garden anchored by white roses. How exciting to have a fresh canvas this upcoming Spring!
Despite the lingering winter, remember to be ever-blooming!
–Carrie
In 2022, inspired by my sons, I went back to college. I never finished because life happened. My oldest son graduated college this year and my youngest son entered college this year. As for me, I took 12 credits while working full-time. My major is Legal Studies, which is appropriate since I work at a law firm. Unlike in my younger years, I am enjoying learning and am getting straight A’s! 🙂 Over the span of this year, in addition to college classes and working, I finished writing my first novel, which I am still editing but hope to self-publish soon. Also, towards the latter part of this year, I bought a cute home in Maryland (with a water view and garden)!
Though some tears were shed, overall, I feel 2022 was a productive, blossoming year. In 2023, I hope to plant roses and more seeds of hope! What are your gardening goals or other goals for 2023? Leave a comment — I’d love to encourage you.
Bloom where you are planted, but also don’t be afraid to be transplanted.
ps-my next class starts mid-January!!
Bee A Good Hostess
One may think bugs, any and all bugs, are pesky nuisances invading our glorious garden, but the truth is without many of them, our garden wouldn’t thrive. Not only do insects, such as the honey bee, provide important roles, but they provide a variety of products as well like certain medications, candles, cosmetics, furniture polish, and of course, honey! Other insects, though ugly and inconvenient, provide proper nutrients to the good insects our garden needs. Often found roaming around our rose gardens are beneficial bugs like lady bugs, hoverflies, and lacewings. Conversely, bad bugs for our roses are aphids, thrips, and sawflies to name just a few. But are they really all that bad? After all, without the “bad” bugs the good bugs would have nothing to sustain them. Did you know just one adult ladybug can devour 50-60 aphids in day?
Most gardeners just want the bad bugs gone without considering the overall environmental factors. While you could spray your rose bushes with insecticide to kill off the bad bugs, you’ll also harm the good ones. Other organic methods include purchasing neem oil concentrate from your local nursery. Be sure to carefully follow the mixing directions though and only apply neem oil during the early morning, evening hours, or on an overcast day as spraying neem oil on your rose foliage during high heat days will burn the leaves. Another option in preventing bad bugs like thrips and the dreaded Japanese Beetle from infesting your rose plants would be to release Heterorhabditis Bacteriophora Nematodes into the soil. These small worm like creatures will seek out and destroy many annoying and dangerous threats to your rose garden before they have a chance to be seen!
Moreover, assuming you will want your rose garden to thrive for years to come, it would behoove you, the Master Gardener, to be a good hostess by creating an inviting environment for the beneficial bugs to reside. In some ways, bugs are much like us in the sense that they need food, shelter, and water. They also appreciate convenience.
By providing a steady food source, you’ll keep your lady bugs, lacewings, and hoverflies happy. But before the aphid buffet shows up in the Spring, you’ll need to provide plant life that will nourish your good bugs earlier in the season. By planting herbs that bloom early and also provide good nectar, the good bugs will want to move into the neighborhood! Herbs such as mustard, dill, and parsley will be sufficient. You many also want to plant lavender, but leave room for growth as lavender tends to consume much space. Mint and thyme will provide a soothing smell to your garden while angelica is an herb that especially attracts ladybugs – bonus!
In addition to the herbs, you’ll also need a bird bath, water feature, pond, or other water source free of chemicals like chlorine. Apparently, even bugs get thirsty and need a bath now and then! Once you’ve created such a welcoming open house, or rather, open garden, it won’t be long before the good bugs set up a nursery of their own by laying their eggs on
our rose foliage. But when the weather turns cooler, don’t let your hard work go to waste, be sure to provide them with ornamental grasses and soft wood twigs and branches, like willow, poplar, and ash for them to stay cozy throughout the winter months. Whether you are a novice gardener or expert, your roses will appreciate your efforts as you build an inviting and thriving rose garden.
“For I know the thoughts that I think about you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. And you shall call Me and go and pray to Me, and I will hearken to you. And you will seek Me and find [Me] for you will seek Me with all your heart. And I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will return your captivity and gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will return you to the place whence I exiled you.” Jeremiah 29:11-14
When I compare the similarities of our garden to our lives, it’s interesting to note how God allows the bad bugs in our garden of life to manifest something spectacular in us as well as God’s heartfelt intention towards us. So often we blame evil or some religious circles blame Satan as the source of our troubles forgetting that even Satan had to seek God’s approval before doing any harm to our garden (see the book of Job). In other words, God, as the Master Gardener, recognizes the bad bugs, but perhaps He’s allowing them in our garden for a reason. Perhaps the reason is to discipline us for our disobedience or perhaps He is developing us into the fragrant, beautiful, disease-resistant rose He intended with no actual wrong-doing on our part such as the accounts of Joseph, Job, or Esther. However, other times, the unfortunate turn of events may actually be a result of our own unrighteousness. In the Book of Jeremiah, the prophet repeatedly warned of the Jewish people being taken captive should they continue to live as they desire rather than live as God desires found in the Torah. The Prophet Jeremiah foretold the Jewish people would be taken captive by Babylon for 70 years, but in the end, that God was using it all to cause them to repent, to seek Him with their whole heart, and in turn God will gladly regather them and bless them while continuing to teach them His ways and will for them as the light to the world. Interestingly, this same prophetic word is applicable to the future of the Jewish people and others who keep God’s holy covenant eventually being gathered to Jerusalem, Mount Zion, in Israel as a light to the world one fine new day (see Jeremiah 29-31; Isaiah 51-56, 60-62, 65-66; Ezekiel 36-37; Hosea 14; Zechariah 8-10, as a few examples).
I want to reiterate the fact that often the seemingly bad bugs attacking us as rose plants could have been released for the sole purpose of teaching us how to reflect our Master Gardener’s glory and splendor to a dark world needing to be enlightened in God’s light and love. How even more glorious and brilliant and yet challenging it is to be ever-blooming, testifying of His love, His wisdom, His justice, and His will when you are currently living amongst the pestilence of life!
In a perplexing manner, God is being a good host as He continues to develop His righteousness in you. He is busy creating a holy, eternal garden or environment where you and others may indefinitely thrive by allowing not just the good experiences or good bugs to benefit from you, but by equally, if not more so, using the bad and down-right ugly experiences to also cultivate beauty.
In doing so, His intention is to develop an ever-thriving, ever-rejoicing, and ever-blooming garden of God within you during the good, the bad, and the bugly. How we respond to such pests and said treatments remains to be seen.
“For when Your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. Let grace be shown to the wicked, yet he will not learn righteousness.” Isaiah 26:9-10
Growing Horizontally
Have you ever noticed how climbing roses produce far more shoots and consequently, stunning clusters of blooms when forced horizontal? As a rosarian, I’ve learned if I gently bend the rose’s cane while fastening it securely with string, the cane will produce significantly more blooms than if I let it grow as it pleases. I have to be careful though as the pliable and tender canes can snap. Equally important is the tension of the string. If the string is too loose, it defeats its purpose of guiding the growing cane. Conversely, if the string is too tight, it can pierce the tissue of the cane causing damage or complete destruction. Ultimately, I have the authority as the master gardener to sculpt each cane as I see fit.
“My body and mind may waste away, but Elohim (God) remains the foundation of my life and my inheritance forever.” Psalm 73:26
Similarly, once upon a time, this frustrated cane found herself no longer free to grow or go wildly as she pleased. Instead, Abba Father, my Master Gardener, placed enough strings to tenderly, but securely force me horizontal through intense back and joint pain preventing me from escaping my bed. Much to my despair, in a matter of weeks, my full-time income rapidly dwindled to part-time income, then unemployment. My financial stability was seemingly ruined! But God delivered and worked everything out for my benefit similar to the Biblical accounts of Joseph, Job, and Esther. Consequently, those difficult days produced a soul harvest I would not trade for any paycheck or even my health.
“I have riches and honor, lasting wealth and righteousness. What I produce is better than gold, pure gold. What I yield is better than fine silver. I walk in the way of righteousness, on the paths of justice, to give an inheritance to those who love me and to fill their treasuries.” Proverbs 8:18-21
Though uncomfortable, OK, frankly it was miserable at times, I blossomed spiritually and emotionally. Through that season of physical pain, this life slowly but surely surrendered to Abba’s nurturing as He wasn’t hesitant to tackle my prickly thorns one by one. His strings were His boundaries inviting me to grow according to His purpose for my life. I could have rebelled against His plans and His boundaries or I could cooperate. The choice was mine. Thankfully, whether vertical or horizontal, I decided to grow with God’s flow!
