I have war wounds from this weekends gardening onslaught.

What began as a little tidying of my climbing roses turned into a 2hr pruning session that required a visit to the neighbours. The climbing roses on my west fence have been running wild for too long now. They are beautiful perfumed roses however there is no way you can ever get a whiff of them when all the flowers are up in the clouds.

I set out to prune them a little so the flowers would develop at head height but this mode of attack was thrown out the door when I realized that most of the growth was over at the next door neighbours place. In the end Biddy Belle my neighbour poked her head over the fence to see what all the commotion was about.  She invited me over so I could fix the mess of branches on her side of the fence.  It was viscous work but after borrowing Biddy Belles loppers I made a real dent in the bushes.

Last on my list was to give the roses a good spray with SuperShield to tackle rust and aphids. Rust is particularly problematic on one of my roses and if I find that after spraying it still doesn’t get rid of the problem I might just have to make a drastic decision and pull that particular rose out and start anew.

Hopefully my actions from Saturday’s battle will result in new spring growth on the lower laterals of the roses so I can finally enjoy the blooms.