I sweartogawd, every time I walk by my roses I can hear them muttering "Bite me" under their breath.

See, as far as I'm concerned plants are characters in their own right, with distinct personalities. As I see it, there are big-spirited plants such as daylilies and hostas that will repay every ounce of kindness you show them by being both beautiful and completely trouble free.

There are thugs like monarda aka bergamot aka bee balm (and the fact that the plant has at least three freakin' aliases tells you right there it's a shady customer) that will choke out its neighbours in a heartbeat if you let it.

And of course you have those high maintenance drama queens, roses.

Oh be quiet. I have NOT spent too much time by myself up here in the woods.

Roses want it all. They want the very best soil you can possibly give them. They want lots of moisture but they want the soil they're in to be insanely well-drained so if they get the slightest excess of moisture it will wick away. They want every possible millisecond of sunshine. They want lots and lots of elbow room and if you give them less than what they feel they deserve they will immediately get some horrific fungal disease just to spite you.

Oh yes, roses are all about the spite. I know. I have been enduring roses for over 25 years now. I am a rose survivor.

I live in a place that can get temperatures that drop to -40 which is the same in either Fahrenheit or Celsius--the technical term is Stupidly Cold. When I first began to grow roses that kind of weather left me the option of the very tough rugosa rose (which basically only flowers once, in June) or I could try growing the more dainty hybrid tea rose, which flowers almost continuously but has to be protected to survive through a winter such as mine.

Because I am a greedy fool, I tried growing hybrid teas for many years. I would lavish them with the best of soil, organic fertilizers, make sure they got adequate water. Every winter I would bury them, just as the books advised, mulch them well, even shovel extra snow over them to keep them insulated.

"Bite me," they'd say, and promptly die. Every spring I would disinter little rose corpses.

Fine.

And then ... and then ... excuse me, just give me a moment to compose myself ... and then the Canadian government got into rose hybridizing and developed the Explorer roses, roses tough enough to survive a Canadian winter. After years and years of ungrateful roses muttering, "Bite me" at every turn I hesitated to buy the Explorers but my late father-in-law took the leap for me and bought me the red John Cabot one year as a birthday gift.

It has been a thing of beauty and a joy forever. After that I bought Alexander McKenzie (pink) and Henry Hudson (white) and can report years and years of trouble free blooms. Except for one little problem.

Pruning.

Roses have to be pruned. You have to cut out the dead wood, the stalks that died over the winter, for the plants to prosper. You'd think that they'd be grateful that you're doing this for them, but oh, no, we're talking roses. Despite wearing thick gloves and an old winter coat to protect my arms, I end up looking like I got into a fight with a cougar or something. Oh yes, Scratches R Me.

Today I began my rose pruning, a torture I will spread over the next week or so since I have six large bushes to do now.

Love hurts, I tell you, love hurts.

You'd think this would be enough pain and suffering for one woman, but oh, no, it gets worse.

Remember me mentioning that for years and years I tried to grow hybrid tea roses only to have them croak on me after one pitiful season? Okay, well four, five years ago my mother-in-law decided to buy me a rose for my birthday and somehow not only picked up a hybrid tea rose, but she also chose a hybrid tea rose of great ugliness. It's a pink that gets on my last nerve.

"No problem," I told myself. "I'll grow it for one season, do nothing at all to protect it, and it will be a pining for the fjords rose next spring. Nobody's feelings get hurt that way."

All well and good except my mother-in-law chose The Ugly Hybrid Tea Rose That Refuses To Die. I have done absolutely nothing for this rose. I do not fertilize it. I do not give it water. I do not protect it from the winter.

Each spring it reappears.

I was especially hopeful this winter. It was extremely cold. There was not a lot of snow cover at the beginning of the winter. Part of the rose's insulating snow cover mysteriously disappeared in February under unexplained circumstances. I was sure that this was the spring that person or persons unknown had driven the stake through its heart, sent it on to The Big Compost Pile In The Sky.

In a word: no. Don't ask me how I know this, but I predict an unfortunate, shovel-related accident in its very near future.

Sometimes a woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do and that's all I'll say about that.

--Marn

P.S. -- A little glimpse at my daffodil meadow now that the mid-season daffs and narcissus have begun to kick in: