The Rose Garden

Hard to see - but little "cuttings" of rose bushes.

Roses in bloom - two photos.

When we arrived here in February, at the end of winter, there was a garden bed near the foreign teachers apartment building that nothing but the soil (tragically bland almost rocky soil) with rows of "sticks" approximately 3 inches high.

For many days I passed this "garden" with little interest, but one day I had a closer look and realized that the little sticks were small rose plants. (I learned later that they had been planted a year or so before and already had had one flowering, and were pruned back severely.)

As spring approached the familiar reddish shoots appeared and over the next month or so the "little sticks" grew until they were about three feet tall with copious buds on them. Right now the roses are blooming - still many buds, and some spent flowers. They are a picture.

(The soil in which the amazing gardens grow here is rocky, and full of clay which clumps. It is surprising to me that they don't compost - and there are many resources here to create compost - to add to the soil to nourish it.)