Ain't got no cukes, but the tomatoes in pots are doing well enough to convince me that I can plant a small veggie garden next year, if I can find the time, energy and $$ for materials to get the raised beds in by fall. I'm pretty sure there is enough sun, if I encroach a little on the town right-of-way, for two 3' or 4' x 10' and possibly another 3'x 6' bed running beside them but perpendicular to them in orientation.

My struggle is going to be with deciding whether to put it all in veggies, or use some of the space to plant some roses or full-sun perennials.

I love roses, maeve, though in this region they all look awful from black spot by mid-summer. I don't have the time to stay on top of the spraying needed - and that is whether or not one uses organic methods.

We bought our old bungalow in Hillsborough from the son of the folks who had built it in 1914. (actually bought it from the lady of the house, but she was in a nursing home in PA by then, so we never met her.) She and her husband were both textile mill workers and people who loved to garden. We bought it in August and moved into it in November. The gardens had been severely neglected for a number of years, and we had no idea of what was there. In the spring, several old, neglected roses began to send out sporatic blooms, and I fell in love. (and earlier, heirloom daffodil, narcissus and hyacinth began to bloom in the midst of grass and weeds, then some hardy carnations and pinks, and the stray crocus) Worked hard to restore and renew them all, but especially the roses.

My favorites were a polyanthus rose that the daughter-in-law told me the Missus had brought from Benson when the family moved here in 1914, and which sports different colors ranging from pink, to coral, to orange to red quite freely, and an old rose that was somewhat desease resistant that I dubbed the Thelma Neighbors rose after the Missus because I could not identify it.   I saw it growing in a few other yards throughout the old mill village district of Hillsborough. It propogates very easily by cutting a semi-hard cane, sticking it in the ground, and firming the soil around it. I made up a story in my head about one of the millworker ladies getting the rose for a Mother's Day or birthday gift, then passing along cuttings to friends and co-workers at the mill, Flint Fabrics (now closed.) It is a a wonderfully fragrant rose, and the color varies with temperatures from clear, pale, pink to a deeper pink with a tinge of coral. The blooms were the densely double of old garden roses, but the shape and the repeat bloom suggested a hybrid tea. It was more desease resistant than most hybrid teas, but still suffered significantly from black spot unless treated with dormant oil in winter and sprayed weekly with neem oil during summer. I propogated it and passed it on to a number of fellow gardeners who admired it over the years. About 3 weeks before I moved, one of those gardeners finally keyed it out. It is an early hybrid tea, introduced somewhere around 1925, if my memory serves me, and is called Aloha.


As I got more and more involved with gardening, I had less and less time to tend to my darlin' roses. I finally reached a point where I fertilized them well in late winter or early spring, pruned them in January, loved their glorious blooms in mid-spring before black spot defoliated them, and viewed them as trap crops for japanese beetles come June.