Hello Fellow GRS Members and Friends,
Can you believe April is here already? One fourth of 2023 is gone and just yesterday it was Christmas. So far this March has been the hottest I have ever experienced. With near 90° days, our roses were in full bloom when we started our spring pruning in February. The flower thrips were out in full force these past few weeks of March, but I do have them under control now after spraying the entire rose plants and ground around them three times within 10 days.
One thing I noticed this year with pruning, most new stems grew very short. I believe this is due to pruning while in bloom, putting stress on the plants. I hope this hot early weather is not what we will experience in the future. If so, it will be hard to get nice early spring blooms.
The Spring GRS "Roses for Everyone" event is just around the corner. We all need to participate and bring what roses we have for the public to experience. This will be a nice way for us to introduce GRS to many who will visit the library on the 29th. Thank you, Jean Giesel and your team, for organizing and planning this for us. Please come and let’s make this a fun event and perhaps we will sign up a few new members.
One of our members has expressed concern for the GRS treasury and us running out of operating funds. When thinking of ways to make some money for the treasury, we all remember the wonderful yard sale we had several years ago. Let us talk about this at the April meeting and see if there would be a good location we could consider.
Another possibility would be to have a plant sale. The Pensacola Rose Society just had one and they made $2,000 in rose sales. We need to be creative with this in order to avoid the work falling on one person. Let’s be thinking of possibilities and talk about it at the meeting. I look forward to seeing you on the 16th.
Ralph Stream, Master Rosarian, President
