Yes! We are meeting this Sunday, January 9 at First Christian Church. Consulting Rosarians Dan Mills and Ralph Stream, and Cyd and Art Wade will be conducting roundtables on selecting and planting roses for our area. We will also discuss the proposed project to renew the rose garden at Kanapaha Botanical Garden. Due to the emergence of the Omicron variant, I am asking you to wear masks to our meeting. We will also spread out as best we can.
At last, we are having some wintery weather. Then, in a few short weeks, it will be time to prune our roses before they put out a lot of new growth. At our February meeting at Kanapaha Gardens, we will have pruning demonstrations and prune the bushes in the rose garden. Even though I gave been growing roses for a long time, I am still intimidated by pruning. Yet, I know that if I “take the bull by the horns”, or the “rose by the thorns.” I will be rewarded by more and better roses.
If you haven’t registered yet for the Deep South District Mid-Winter Meeting January 21-23, I encourage you to do that. We are so lucky to have this meeting right here in Gainesville at the Best Western Hotel. This is a chance to relax and enjoy meeting rose friends and learn more about roses—new roses, single roses, chili thrips, and “soil magic?”. The Thomasville and Tallahassee area rose societies are hosting. They have added a fourth speaker to the already great Saturday sessions: Cynthia Nazario-Leary Ph.D. from the University of Florida.
She will be speaking about pesticides and chili thrips. Because of this addition, the, meeting on Saturday will start at 8:30 A.M. If you have any small items to contribute for door prizes at the MWM, please bring them to our Jan. 9 meeting.
Thanks to our hostesses Ann Sherwood, Susan Cooperman, Kathi Warren, and Debbie Brown for a lovely holiday party. We all enjoyed a wonderful meal, lovely tables, and “fun” gift exchange. We especially thank Ann for sharing the beautiful holly, full of berries, sent to her by a relative and to the Streams and Linda Wilcox for providing the turkey and ham.
Here’s to a “Rosy” 2022:
Jean Giesel, President
