Roses

Not long ago I posted some pictures of our backyard roses, and how beautiful they're looking this spring, despite my best efforts of completely neglecting them. 

Here is one of the best of the bunch right now, in bloomage and in shape.  Those roses just seem to be glowing every time I look out the kitchen window:

I'm not sure what the little red rose is doing at its feet.  I think it snuck under the fence from the  neighbor's yard.  Perhaps it's just looking up admiringly at its new big friend Glowing Yellow Tree Rosebush.  "Wow," it says.  "Do you need a haircut."

 Here's another picture of this one:

Despite how beautiful all of the roses are, little red rose is right - they're all badly in need of some good grooming - I mean, pruning.

After our friend Lee gave me some advice on pruning them last weekend, I decided to take the pruning shears to them a few days ago.  I tried to follow his advice, but I couldn't help but imagine the Rose Society ladies gasping aloud every time I made a cut.   (Quiet, ladies.  I'm doing the best I can here.)

Of course, with a result like this bush above, one can understand why the Rose ladies would be gasping.  It's just that I don't want to sacrifice any blooms in the name of pruning.  So, I'm only cutting back branches that have no blooms on them at the moment.  Then when these blooms die, I'll cut back these, as well.  By then perhaps some new blooms will be on the pruned parts.

Perhaps this way there will always be roses, which in my opinion is not a bad thing at all.