Sunny yellow rose!

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I have battled and battled with this rose for quite some time, and it often drove me to distraction, because it always seemed plagued by SOMETHING – mites, red spiders, aphids, fungus, you name it, this rose seemed to attract it! But ever since Ike, when I shuffled my plants around and placed it surrounded by geraniums, the yellow rose has flourished.

Louise Riotte, in her book “Roses Love Garlic” states that geraniums are beneficial companions to roses, and I wonder if that’s why the rose has less insects/plagues attacking it now. I would love to think it was my TLC, but I think the geraniums may be discouraging the insects! So now the rose is not only blooming, it is giving me what I call ‘bunches’ of roses, meaning three roses on a stem, when usually it gives me only one! A funny thing about the roses in Houston (and the geraniums) is that they do much better once the weather cools off, so much so that I once told my sister “I wonder if they think they’re in a fridge in some florists’ shop?” lol I’m pretty thrilled right now, though worried about the red and the white rose, which seem to be much weaker. I’m even thinking of getting a new geranium to put next to them. Since I love geraniums, it’s a good excuse to indulge and get another one!

(The pictures above are not of one rose. They’re of different blooms in different stages of flowering.)

• 8 Dec, 2008
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