Rolling Right Along


My 2011 Old Farmer's Almanac Engagement Calendar arrived on Monday signaling the approaching end of 2011. Time to get the summer chores wrapped up, the wood for the stove ordered for the winter, the mower's winterized, etc. My shopping trip to Taos yesterday reinforced this. All the garden centers had sales on remaining plants, and the art store was awash with students looking for art supplies.

I decided to take a tip from my blog friend, Becky, and prepare my beds this fall to get a jump on next spring. To that end I purchased some edging for an existing bed that is invaded with weeds and a new area around the aspens I want to turn into more of an island in the lawn. Not sure I have enough but I can make a beginning. I am told you edge the bed and then weed and mulch for winter. I am always so busy in spring with art fair prep that I am behind the minute I get the hoses out of storage.

I also bought a "Nearly Wild" Rose to plant. This hardy species of rose bush before they hybridized them is one that survives in my mountain area. And August, Becky has reminded me, is a perfect time to plant shrubs, bushes and trees.


And August is a time when I can give it the attention it needs to get its rooting system established before winter. The rose is for the memory of Marc. I am sure most men would bristle at the thought of a pink rose planted for them but it wasn't his choice. It was mine. BTW the Hansa rose I planted in memory of Kathi last summer has returned. I thought it was a goner last fall and even mowed it down after total frustration fighting the mildew it came from the nursery with, but like Kathi it is a fighter. No doubt next summer it will be a bloomer.

All which brings me back to that 2011 calendar which sparked this blog: How optimistic us humans are! We are so sure we will be around for the new year, or the new growing season, or the vacation scheduled for next summer. But then what is the alternative? To just sit in our rockers before the television and await death. George Burns, as he entered his nineties, would joke in his stand up comedy routine that every morning he checked the obits to see if his name was there. It was going to be a great day if it wasn't.

I think, as I grow older, I become a bit irreverent about death. I told my two best friends yesterday when they separately called to find out how I was doing with Marc's demise that if I predeceased them I wanted a memorial service befitting a person that survived (and enjoyed) the 1960's and 70's (even if I cannot remember all of either decade). I am a wild rose. Not a tea rose.

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