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Dr. Leda's Rose Journal |
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You Can't Keep A Good Rose Down
Dr. Leda says: When life hands you lemons, fix yourself a gin and tonic or two.
By Dr. Leda Horticulture, O. R.
June, 2004
At 4:43 a.m., I was awakened by the sharp staccato of gunshots in my backyard—POW! POP! POWPOW!—followed by the sound of shattering glass. So naturally I did what any normal, sane, intelligent woman would do: I ran outside in the pitch dark, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, to see who the heck had disturbed my slumber.
Fortunately, it wasn't the revolution or a stray gang war. My neighbor's 40-foot pecan tree had, for no apparent reason, snapped about 10 feet up the trunk and toppled onto my house. Actually only one of its upper branches had hit the house, breaking a pane in my laundry room window. The other 900 tons of tree were draped luxuriantly over what was left of the fence and sprawled lifelessly on top of my prize rose beds, like a drunk who'd passed out cold, flat on his face, in the parlor. (Continued below...)
June Events and Free Wallpaper
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All Events During June are Free! Tune in for three special workshops this month!For complete information, see the event announcements.
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All I could do was stand and gape in horror.
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| Dr. Leda's yard before her neighbor's stray pecan tree molested her roses. |
Once they were assured it wasn't Charles Whitman on a sniper rampage, my intrepid little dogs Dixie and Dolly (together they weigh about nine pounds) crept out from under the bed and bounded out the back door to take charge of the situation. They raced around the giant intruder in furious circles, yapping ferociously for it to go away. But the tree didn't budge. They did succeed in flushing out a hapless squirrel who had been nesting in the fallen branches. Gleefully forgetting all about the mangled rose carnage that had so recently been my pride and joy, the girls busied themselves chasing this dazed and homeless rodent until it finally managed to find refuge in a nearby Magnolia.
Meanwhile I sat on the back steps and wept.
As the sky grew lighter, I could see that things were even more dire than I'd suspected. My poor roses were crushed and trapped beneath the wreckage, I could practically hear them screaming for help. And to make matters worse, the neighbor who owned the tree was away on vacation. So it was just me and my trusty Felcos, up against a 900-ton tree with a two-foot diameter trunk. I glanced at the Felcos in my pocket, but they just whistled tunelessly under their breath and looked the other way. Ok, so it was just me vs. the tree. Much worse.
Luckily, before full blown hysteria set in, I recalled the very first lesson I had learned when I moved here four years ago, which was that Louisiana is truly the Land of Angels. No sooner had I settled into my new home and opened a bank account than an endless parade of helpful souls appeared at my kitchen door, offering to assist me in any way possible. Total strangers had dropped in out of nowhere, wanting to whack my weeds, wash my windows, rotate my tires, paint my porch, cover my beautiful 19th century Victorian with tacky aluminum siding, you name it. Experience had taught me that all I had to do was get out the checkbook and wait; help would soon be on the way.
Sure enough, the first angel arrived at 8:05 a.m., in the person of Mr. Oscar O. Dupuis III, a neighborhood character who pedals around town on a rusty old bicycle offering to do odd jobs for exorbitant sums.
"Morning," he said, doffing his cap as I opened the kitchen door. "I come to see about your firms."
"I beg your pardon?"
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| The pecan tree grazed Dr. Leda's home but, more importantly, completely smothered her roses. |
"I come to prume the firms on your patio," he explained patiently. "I won't charge you but sixty dollars."
"Oh," I said. "Well no thank you, the ferns don't need pruning today. They're fine. What I really need is..."
"For eighty dollars I'll prume your Rhododendrums too," he interrupted.
"Mr. Dupuis," I said. "First of all, I don't HAVE any Rhododendrons. Second of all, that is my prize collection of rare tropical ferns, and they DON'T need pruning. Third of all, this isn't New York, so that would be a totally absurd price for what wouldn't even amount to twenty minutes of labor. Fourth of all..."
"Ninety dollars," he countered. "And that's my final offer."
I rolled my eyes.
"Now don't you go being that way," he chided. "Just hand me those shears you got in your pocket so I can finish before it gets too hot." As he snatched my Felcos and headed for the patio, he called back over his shoulder, "For another $400, I can put you up some alunimum siding."
"Mr. Dupuis!" I heard myself shouting. "Don't you DARE prume those firms or I'll.. I'll SUE you!" Wouldn't every attorney in town be eager to win a percentage of the rusty Schwinn?
I finally managed to convince him he'd be better off tackling the wild Wisteria that had eaten the garage. (Another thing I love about Louisiana is the high-class weeds: I'm constantly battling native Wisteria, Alstroemeria, Akebia, Tradescantia, Lycorus—all "rare" plants I would have happily purchased back in the Bay Area.)
With Mr. Dupuis safely occupied elsewhere, I was free to greet the next wave of angels, who showed up simultaneously at 8:35 a.m.: an elderly couple from down the block, the mail carrier, and a lost tourist from Toledo who was looking for the Zydeco museum. They weren't much help with the pecan tree, but were more than happy to commiserate, and we all enjoyed sitting a spell on the veranda sipping sweet tea and swapping natural disaster stories.
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| Mike has at the pecan tree blocking his mower. |
At 9:02 the doorbell rang again. This time the angel was Mike, a soft-spoken man who's been mowing my lawn for four years. Down here in the land of excessive heat and humidity, where the grass and weeds grow three inches an hour, a good reliable yard person is even more highly coveted than a hair dresser who knows the best gossip in town and uses anti-frizz products that actually work. And Mike, bless his heart, is the Frederic Fekkai of lawn care. No, you can't have his number.
"I was fixin' to mow your yard," he announced when I opened the door. "But for some reason there's a pecan tree laying out back so I couldn't get the mower through the gate. Would you mind too much if I was to move that tree out of there?"
"Oh, " I said casually. "Ok, no, sure. Fine. No problem. Take it away. Whatever." So Mike got on his cell phone, and five minutes later three pickups full of relatives with chainsaws pulled into my driveway. These haloed liberators went to work on that baby, and by lunchtime they'd hauled away every last leaf and twig, for half of what Mr. Dupuis would have charged to pull out a dandelion.
And here's the most amazing thing: I didn't lose a single rose. There were a few broken necks and bent canes, but no fatalities. Miraculously, the roses sprang back phoenix-like, with the same tough resilience we have so often despised in their indestructible black-sheep cousins, the wild blackberries. And now, with that horrid pecan tree gone, they'll be getting an extra two hours of sun every day which should double the amount of blossoms.
Here's a toast, to the guardian angels of roses everywhere.
