Who says roses are hard to grow??? Look at mine! My miniature rose bush heralded spring with a triumphant blaze of red blossoms. Nope, I don’t have trouble with blossoms. My problem is leaves. There are none! My poor plant is nude! Something (ladybugs?) just loves to eat my rose leaves. (See photo below.) I haven’t gotten around to making my organic insect repellent yet. It works great. The garlic and jalapeno spray recipe can be found at Dirtdoctor.com. Or, email me, and I’ll send it to you. I may try it on herbs this year.

DH worked outside this weekend wrangling a tree stump. The 35-foot oak tree died, sadly, and had to come down a year or so ago. The huge stump was firmly intact. He managed to get a lot of it cut and even sliced a piece. Can you count the rings? Good luck! This was an old tree.

Speaking of ladybugs, we have had an infiltration this year. Gross. They are all over the exterior of my house, my plants, dead. Crunchy dead. Stuck dead. We are going to have to powerspray them off. Our neighbors had the same problem. I’ve never experienced this before.

My irises sure were gorgeous this year. They had a long blooming season, just finishing this week. In fact, I still have a couple of blooms about to open. I don’t recall them ever blooming this late before.

Sure do miss that tree. Sniff sniff. We have 8 left, several in the back yard, but the city hacked them back last fall away from the power lines till it feels like there is little shade. It makes me sad.