Never trust a rose. Roses are the Mata Hari of the flower world, seductively gorgeous, velvet petals, sexy scent ... and then their thorns snag your best jumper so it's unrepairable. I am sure you can hear them sniggering behind you.
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Roses' other great trick is "skin scraping", most common about this time of year when elderly friends and relatives visit, and bend down to admire the perfection of your rose bed. The rose thorn penetrates their skin and leaves a long deep scratch half way up their arm which at best can spoil the family ping pong tournament, or at worst needs stitches, a tetanus shot or at least a stinky splodge of Dettol and some sticking plaster.
![Once rose thorns are snipped off, they don't return. Pictures Shutterstock Once rose thorns are snipped off, they don't return. Pictures Shutterstock](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/Z4Q6sUEHdcmw72MBPYgZkU/f840d3a0-daa0-433b-8eb2-69c941827d07.jpg/r0_53_1000_615_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
There are three solutions, of course: don't plant roses , which is almost impossible for any garden lover; stick to thornless roses like Lady Banksia rose and the friendlier floribundas, or attack first. Get out some long-handled secateurs and cut the thorns off.
Once rose thorns are snipped off, they don't return. You can have the prickliest bush imaginable draped over the archway above your garden path in perfect safety.
![Try thornless varieties like Lady Banksia rose. Try thornless varieties like Lady Banksia rose.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/Z4Q6sUEHdcmw72MBPYgZkU/7ebdaf9b-ef07-4375-a519-8d5811f6c9e6.jpg/r0_53_1000_615_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Our thorniest foe has not been a rose, but the vigorous not-really-a-cumquat cross that grows at the top of our garden stairs. It grew from a chance seedling. Its mum was a calamondin, a bit like a cumquat but hardier, but I have no idea who its dad is. It may have been a cumquat, or a mandarin, but whatever it was, its offspring is tall and straight limbed, like a mandarin; its fruit is small and round and sweeter than calamondins, and its thorns are almost long enough to use as duelling weapons. It was a severe danger to any passing guest, wombat or wallaby - low prickles especially are a danger to wombat eyes.
Out came the secateurs. Each six months or so, as it grows, I've cut off the thorns, so it's now neatly trunked and not at all threatening. I've stopped the thorn pruning now, as I can't reach any higher, but it should be safe for anyone under 2.5 metres tall to walk next to it.
MORE GARDENING:
Never let a prickle defeat you! Every thorny plant I've shorn has stayed prickleless. I admit I have been tempted to give one of those round-headed cactus a mullet, but have resisted. It's a wild understatement to say I'm not a cacti exert. But I have discovered you can take a sharp disposable razor and shear a cactus, with great care, both to yourself and your cactus. If you nick yourself, it hurts. If you nick the cactus, you may well let in various cactus rots and end up with no cactus at all. You do need a steady hand and delicacy for this - it is not a job for kids or anyone who's been into the season eggnog, or our annual fruit cake which should more accurately be called "whisky and rum bound together by candied fruit and a few teaspoons full of cake".
This is the time to remove other holiday dangers in the garden. Check under the garden furniture for redback spiders. Clear away piles of junk where snakes might hide and dogs stick in their noses. Add a little edible oil on top of water features or even the dogs' bowl so mozzies don't breed there and give you all Barmah River fever for the holidays. Put those small plastic caps, commercial or home-made, on any garden stake so no one falls on them and loses an eye or a tooth. If you aren't the tidy "hang up the spade now" kind, put caps on the top of the rake, too, or any tool that someone may tread on or fall on, again with serious consequences. Clean the slippery moss from the paving by the back door and scrub the barbecue.
Now have something cool and delicious. You've earned it - and proved that humanity is superior to the most thorny garden plant.
This week I am:
- Renouncing my former resolution and buying glorious deep red geranium/pelargoniums and hydrangeas. This has been one heck of a month of family illness and minor catastrophes, but everything looks better with lots of red geraniums/pelargoniums.
- Buying cucumber seedlings to add to the single cucumber plant that has survived slugs and Possum X.
- Admiring the cunning of the tomatoes - as soon as I complain they are doing nothing, they put on a spurt of growth and produce fruit as big as small apples. We may have ripe tomatoes for Christmas yet!
- Harvesting the first small zucchini.
- Reminding myself that if 1,894,321 rain dances haven't worked, then there is no reason to think number 1,894,322 will work either.
- Wishing we could engineer the vigour and drought resistance of weeds into lettuce, basil and English spinach.
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