Wives, Common Interests, Roses and the Green Tumb vs Green Brain

I've always felt that one of the necessary conditions for a successful marriage is some commonality of interest or experience.  Mrs. Bugbear and I both work in the construction industry, she as an architect and I as an engineer.  In a rare instance of providence  we can talk shop even though we don't share the same careers, we even occasionally work on the same projects which can make for interesting dinner table conversation, for us anyway.  My wife and I also have a larger difference in age compared to most of the couples we know and there seems to be a generation gap at times.  To compensate for this I decided to indulge in one of my wife's hobbies so that we had a bit more in common.


My wife seems to love plants, and generally she seems to be quite successful in nurturing them.  As you can see in the three pictures the front flower beds are examples of almost riotous growth.

Last year I decided that rather than depending on my wife's largess as far as plants went I would endeavour to assume responsibility for some of the horticulture on our small steading.  Now I also didn't want to impinge to greatly on my time available for my other pursuits like reading and blacksmithing.  So I decided that in the interest of conserving as much of my precious resource (free time) as possible I would pick some plants that are low maintenance, pretty and of interest to me personally.  I settled on roses and managed to get two and a half out of three on my criteria.  Roses aren't high maintenance but they aren't low maintenance either.  Last year I planted my first rose bush in the front flower bed.  The front bed is the first picture in this post and you can't see the rose bush because Audrey the monster clematis blocks the view, you can barely see the rose in the third picture.  The other plant pictured is Tarragon.  The effect of mixing topsoil and well rotted manure in a flower bed is amazing isn't it.  All the rain this year helps too. This year I planted two more matching roses (white and red flowers) in the backyard on Mother's day and for my birthday my parent's gave me a white rose.

There are two points to my rambling. The first is that I've found that enjoying growing plants. I enjoy growing plants despite the general antipathy growing up on a farm and working in a greenhouse has given me towards plants.  As a side note I grew  37000 chrysanthemums over the course of two summers working at a greenhouse as well as 2000 poinsettias.  I used to be able to identify 'mums by the flower or leaf, age and lack of use is robbing me of this vital life skill.

The second is that there are two types of successful gardeners or plant-herds, green thumbs and green brains.  My wife is demonstrably of the green thumb school, she seems to have a natural talent for gardening and combining plants for display.  Audrey the monster Clematis is just one example, she even managed to get our modest vegetable garden in the backyard looking artistic with the dill threading up through the tomato pants.

I have a green brain that is to say I have no innate talent with plants I just read a book and apply what the book says.  I started with one rose bush and now I'm up to four and I read obsessively about the care and maintenance of our black walnut tree in the front yard I inspect it weekly as well (they're kind of interesting trees).  I also discovered how to get our Christmas cactus to thrive rather than just survive and I hope to get it to flower successfully this year.  Personally I'd rather have the innate talent that my wife has but one has to make do with the gifts on has.  As soon as I figure out what they are I'll start making do, until then I'll just have to depend on my brain, so far it's working out well.