On this third sunny day in a row I cleaned the circular perennial beds all afternoon. This project will take up to a week to accomplish, but it felt good to get started, and I spent a few hours clearing, cutting back, removing debris, and pruning. Winter has taken a toll, and plants are dried out, frost damaged and badly in need of cutting back.  I snapped this photo of the edge of the circular garden in October when we toured the house.

The previous owners were not huge rose growers, but there are 10-12 rose bushes of various types and sizes scattered throughout the gardens, mainly lovely climbers which I am excited to see come to life. The area that has at least half of the roses is this circular bed area. Two of the rose bushes are scary, with prehistoric-looking thorns. I’d never seen anything like these before. I may convince hubby to dig them out because they are difficult to work around, and one giant is impeding the growth of a young dogwood tree. Thorny bushes were a favorite of the owners, especially along the fence line and at the very edge of some beds, since they had large dogs and tried to keep the dogs from trampling the plants, I’m sure.