Old Rose

This is the first bloom on the old rose that I mentioned previously.  (It has since been joined by a few friends.)  The rose 'bush' is a few thick stalks about 8 feet tall, with a succession of flowers at the tops of the stalks from about now until about Christmas, with a short holiday in August.  I suspect it was planted many years ago by the last Englishwoman to live here, and as such I don't want to lose it.  At some point I am going to try and take cuttings from it (can you even do that with roses?) or just prune it and hope for the best as I don't think its current shape is making it happy.  

Although I know a reasonable amount about a fair variety of gardening things, roses have sort of passed me by.  I buy them, I plant them, I deadhead them, I plant lavender nearby as that's supposed to help them in a way that I can't even remember, but at some point I'll need to read up on them, I suppose.

This morning was cooler than it has been, but I've been neglecting school accounts work and so, having had my wrist ever so gently slapped by the proper accountant for such neglect, I got cracking today and caught up with the past five months of work.

That, of course, meant that today's properly important (in my eyes) work digging the new tomato bed had to wait until this afternoon when it was about 400 degrees outside.  But it is done and, after a long shower, I am restored to human form again.

Another development was that I think I have finally excavated the bramble thorn that has been embedded in my thumb, reversing me several steps back down the evolutionary ladder with the loss of opposability.  

Dinner, West Wing, bed.

Mr B's back tomorrow, so I'm sure I will have more interesting things to talk about than flowers and thumbs.