This has been an unusual growing season so far. Here we are at Mother’s day, May 11, 2008. Our hybrid rugosa “Wildberry Breeze” is blooming and almost all of the other bushes not attacked by deer are in bud. Pruning here in the South Hills of Pittsburgh has been unusual also. Instead of going down to 6-8” to get to white wood (no winter damage) as is common in the spring, many of the canes are at 24-36” or longer and healthy. This means that a decision has to be made to radically prune for fewer blooms on longer sturdier canes or go higher. The higher is said to result in more, earlier bloom but smaller flowers. The later is not what exhibitors want. Personally, we went for the longer canes and more blooms only to be attacked by roaming deer herds that finished the pruning for us. We will let you know later what this did to the bushes and the final flowering display. I assume that we will get a flowering display since we stopped relying on deer repellant alone and put deer netting around the exposed 90-foot perimeter of the rose garden. Unfortunately, the current trend to “Carefree” roses will not solve the deer problem. But, more on that later. We hope to see many of you, especially the newer members, at the May 18, 2008 meeting at Holy Family Hall in Lawrenceville. The topic is “Growing roses in Containers” along with tips and instructions on rooting with recycled pop bottles. And if you are having deer issues, we can talk about that too. See you there!