The attack was on!

Japanese beetles. My mother hated them. Well, what's to love about a Japanese Beetle, except maybe the rainbow of colors on their black wings.

My mother spent lots of time battling those critters. She would go out early in the morning and water her garden (best to water in the evening, but she did it both in a.m. and p.m.), and if she saw the smallest hint of the dreaded JB infestation, she was out there with her spray can -- it was pump thing that held the DDT in a canister on the other end, and she would pump and spray her bushes. And she was religious about this and would pump and spray each day until her roses were clean of that awful bug.

She had a battle with mites as well. But I have to say, my mother's roses were always beautiful. She worked at keeping them that way.

She rarely cut them from the bushes, except for the climbers. I think she preferred to see them in her garden rather than have a rose cut, put in a vase, and then dead in a couple of days. At least dying on the vine, to her was more natural.

I know she would have loved to get a dozen roses from time to time, but not from her garden. Her roses were to be on her bushes and that was that!

TTFN