…at Walmart, and is happy. I got one that says: “Instant Pirate. Add Rum.” And I also got something I had to ask myself if I needed, but yes. I need a place for my working papers and books instead of stacking them on the floor and getting them blown about by the ceiling fan. It’s a put-together cabinet. It has 3 wicker drawers across where I can store papers and my huge stacks of printout, and 6 cubby-holes where I can put stray reference books and little boxes of oddments. Plus it’s the same size and scale as my other furniture. I prefer light furniture, a little on the modern side, but I like things that are light and that you can move easily. With anything I have, you take out a couple of drawers, grab hold 1 on a side, and lift and shift. So now I won’t have papers meandering across the office.
Jane’s in there now putting it together. She loves flatpack furniture. Loves to build things.
They’re saying we get one more warmup this week.
We’ve got a lot we’ve got to do before coldweather. To our regret, we lost the pretty Hinoki cypress we got this spring. A post-mortem on the roots showed why: they’d been packed in clay, and never burst the rootball. Next spring we’re going to wash the roots clean and plant with good drainage, and that should do it. We’re going to need to mulch the poor neglected roses, trim them down to the mulch top, and watch for cold weather to pop their styrofoam shells atop. We didn’t lose a single rose last winter. We hope to keep that record.
I envy your rose record. I usually lose some every winter [my brother, who lives in St. Louis, feels that roses are really annuals]. A local plant lady told me to dig the hole for them twice as deep as they need, and plant them half way down. that way the water stays with them, and you can mulch the hole to the top for the winter. She has 50 plants and has never lost one. I tried that last winter and saved more than usual, though my record was not 100% by any means. So, what do you do with the styrofoam?
Lowe’s sells some styrofoam buckets meant for large plants. Cut the roses back to no more than 6″ stalks. Jam the styrofoam bucket atop, weight it with a rock on top, and mulch around the bucket. Be sure to put the bucket on at the first hard freeze, and be careful taking it off, not to leave it until the sun heats the plant too hot, not to take it off too soon and freeze the tender leaves.
Ours, including Just Joey and World Peace, which are delicate, survived a 5 foot snowfall and a number of nights below -12.
I stumbled across these little end tables — moveable and lots of surfaces to put stuff in — in a catalog this weekend and though they might work for you. Never have gotten anything from this company, so can’t really vouch for the quality, but heck for the price might be worth getting. I was thinking on one for our spare bedroom next to the guest bed. Some assembly required it says, so Jane could play too.
http://www.collectionsetc.com/Rolling_Magazine_Table/product.aspx?productid=36461&itemnumber=10090&srhe=1&Ntt=363-18-10090&productname=Rolling_Magazine_Table&alias=3631810090
Those are nice. We like Collections: cheap and good enough to serve.
I probably shouldn’t point out that my trouble with roses in the winter is figuring out when to chop the darn things back. They don’t go dormant around here, so you just pick some point when they have grown too large and hack them back.
Hey… here’s a Latin question for anyone who can answer it: I’ve been listening to “Red Right Hand”, which they say is from Milton’s Paradise Lost. But the footnote that I found there said it was from Horace’s “rubente dextra”. Ok.. I can see that that would translate to “red right hand”. But what the heck did Horace mean by it, and did Milton use it with the same meaning?
Thou hast piqued my curtiosity. When Horace used it, he was talking about Jupiter chucking thunderbolts at Caesar (or Caesar’s enemies?) Milton was likewise talking about God blasting the wicked. My feeling is that the ‘red right hand’ is the smiting hand, the one which metes out Divine Punishment, IMHO.
I think you’re possibly right, and it’s poetry, so sanguinea (blood-red) wouldn’t fit the meter: hence rubente (blush-red), but it can also mean ‘glowing red’, as in hot iron, so possibly it’s a special-effects moment.
That’s what everyone said, but the use in the song is so opposite of that (it’s a pretty creepy song… you can see it on Youtube), that I was wondering if there was some other meaning or if this was just extreme artistic license. And then I was wondering what Horace was using it for, since it probably wasn’t “the avenging God of the Old Testament”!
My Lowes doesn’t seem to have those styrofoam buckets, or maybe they’re just not in stock yet.
CJ, where do you buy your roses. (When I was little, my parents would tease me when they’d ask me my name. I’d say, “Joey”, then they’d add something to it, and I’d say, “Just Joey”. I wonder if someone overheard that 55 years ago.)
I probably should grab a copy of Milton and sit down and read it, hopefully not whacked out on Vicodin, just to see what he was writing.
Possibly they’ll come in when the weather gets colder. You can also try Ace. But Lowes usually has them in the garden section: you can re-use them year to year.
http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/pl.php?n=3564
This photo doesn’t do it justice. Blooms are up to 8″ across and prolific. Takes a lot of feeding, and needs to be protected in a hard winter. It’s one of our favorites.
I read Milton as a high school senior, and appreciated his imagery, but I think, like Dante, he liked hell too well. 😉
I understand that bubblewrap also works as an insulator. With roses you’d have to have some sort of armor on the inside though.
Or just that insulation material you use on houses, will work on a freestanding pot up to a certain amount of windchill.
What kind if temperature range are you talking about? I’ve had very good luck making a tube out of bubble wrap, kevlar or even heavy plastic and stuffing it full of oak leaves. Any leaf that doesn’t break down easily would probably work as well. I’ve had plants survive 12 below this way. Here in RI we get wide temp variations which are real killers. I even lost oriental lilies last year. They generally wear like iron here.
We’re zone 5, ranges up to 65 and down to minus 10 in the winter. Our variability is what hurts a lot of very trusting plants. When I lived in Oklahoma, another zone 5, but with brutal drying wind, we used to joke that the surest sign of a random late snowfall was apricots in bloom, and the surest forecast of a major hailstorm was peonies. Gets them every single year. I haven’t dared try an apricot up here.
But the peonies do great.
Wow! Just Joey is one gorgeous flower!
You should see the bush with about 8-10 of those huge blooms at once. It’s Lawn and Garden magazine for sure!
Here, if the photo comes through, is another of our favorites, World Peace. It’s brighter than this illo. A red peace rose.
http://www.helpmefind.com/plant/l.php?l=21.31156
I note that they list Just Joey as a zone 7-10. We’re zone 5 and we keep it very nicely. Clipping back the canes and deep mulch and cover for the winter and it’s snug until spring.
What is it about peonies that makes them so attractive? My mother had a few in her garden years ago, the lady who owned the house next door had them extensively throughout her garden. It was a very lovely back yard in her lot, she had peach trees, all varieties of flowers, and it is all gone now. 🙁
I thought I heard on on of the PBS gardening shows that peonies should be planted/transplanted in January, so I’m trying to hold off buying them if I can get them locally, or else have to mail order them. My uncle runs a greenhouse, but I don’t know if he’s going to be able to get them for me.
I have to go out and take care of my sadly wizened roses, the JFK has one bloom on it, and the other ones are too spindly. I need to get the shears out and be a bit cruel to be kind to my roses. I think we got enough rain for Ruthie’s Japanese Maple, but it’s very heavily mulched and not subject to a lot of drying wind and sunshine in the afternoon.
Maybe I’ll break down and order a “Just Joey” for the other roses along the side of the house. I should tear out all of that space between the roses and make it into a real flower bed.
Peonies can be tough. We’ve had some that took a lot of abuse, but if heavily mulched, they can be put in now or in the spring: they may not bloom much the first year, but they’re hardy. If you get a Just Joey, be sure and mulch it deeply and feed it nearly weekly to keep it in nearly constant bloom.
I planted peonies shortly after I moved here (it was 2 years ago July 1, so not prime time for planting peonies). 3 plants. Last year I had one peony blossom, I took pictures and sent them around to everyone, I was so proud of it! This year all 3 plants had blossoms, though still nothing like the well-established peony beds around the neighborhood. A lot of the country cemeteries here in Iowa are planted with peonies along the paths; they are usually beautiful around Memorial Day.
I love those old style cabbage roses. My grandmother had an ancient bush that was solidly pink every year, and they were incredibly fragrant. The closest I have found to that old bush was a rose called Sweet Surrender; I planted one at a house we rented years ago, but left it behind. I wonder if I can find one for this house? I’d have to feed, water, and mulch the heck out of it to get it to perform!