Tag: Postulant Gardener

Scent of Roses

Did you know? FLORA

Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
– Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)

Scent of Roses

You might have guessed that I am partial to flowers and to the roses especially.

I love roses because of so many things that are going for them. I love their texture: velvety petals, I love their scents – so clean and fragrant, I love that they are easy to grow. No matter how many aphids ungraciously attack the buds and blooms of roses, the flower usually would ultimately open its aphids’ degraded, less than perfect offering ready to face the sun no matter what! There is a certain braveness about them that I find admirable. It is that “take me as you find me’ attitude.  Yeah roses have got attitude and plenty of it.

What I am saying can probably be best describe on the photos below, some roses are perfect and some are victims to the weather and insect and yet they have inherent beauty and scent, which unfortunately cannot be translated into the internet, just yet. Probably one day just like the scratch and snip letters I used to receive from friends.

Did you know?

According to a German research, it was discovered that there is a correlation between smells and dreams.  The scent of roses and other fragrance such as lavender means a sleeper will have a good dream.  While the negative happens when a sleeper is exposed to unpleasant smell, they will have nightmares.

 

The rose is without why.
It blows because it blows.
It think not of itself
And no display it shows.
– Angelus Silesius

Slugs & Snails

FAUNA

Slugs and Snails NOT NICE, NOT CUTE!!!

helpful tips

illustration from: http://www.molluscs.at

illustration from: http://www.molluscs.at

It is so heartbreaking to find  the next  morning that those carefully nurtured plants had become a free for all evening feast for nasty  creatures of the night.

Sometimes with tears still barely dry from my forlorn face, I would reach for the nearest tub of slug pellets and spread them here, there and everywhere so thickly, with so much impunity that nothing but total massacre for all the slugs and snails can be expected.  Unfortunately this also creates another stress inducing dilemma.  I would then be left with a vomit-inducing sight of slimy dead slugs and snails around my hostas!

Also now that we have a darling pet dog, who eats everything he sees including fish food, I had to think more carefully of what I apply in the garden.

Peter’s solution to slug and snail control does not comply with my ideas.  He usually pick them up rather gingerly and carefully put them under the bushes.  Of course in no time they would come back like welcome visitors!!!

Sometimes Peter can’t bear my screeches and feels like  the devil is on his back; no recourse but for him to enforce a more drastic measure.  He would toss the slugs and snails that he finds into the next garden, under the cover of darkness of course! LMAO

Nothing to worry anymore, Peter.  Apparently to deter these pesky slugs and snails from their very anti-social habit of  marauding, it is useful to sprinkle eggshells and lemon peels around plants that are more susceptible to slugs and snail attacks.  Snails and slugs are repelled by the lemon scent and their soft bodies can’t stand the gritty egg shells.

Keep those egg shells and lemon peels from the green bins and leave them for the slugs and snails.