Well, it's spring. We're having a glorious flowering this year, the warm climate roses are laden--my rather scraggly plant of 'Marechal Niel' is blooming magnificently--the happier Teas, i.e. those terraced with lighter soil and not fighting pottery clay are blooming wonderfully. Grass, trees, and shrubs are all as lush as can be. I don't know why all this surprises me. Possibly the heavy snow of February right after we all had flu rendered me pessimistic--it certainly smashed a lot of plants--and then we had a mild winter that did nothing to suppress pests, spring arrived with the worry about the deadly new Box Tree Moth, March was uniformly gloomy and gray, April was dry and as hot as summer. None of this strikes me as favorable to bloom, but there you are: 'Jaune Desprez', 'General Schablikine', 'Cl. Papa Gontier', 'Souv. de Mme. Leonie Viennot', 'Mme. Antoine Mari', 'Mrs. B.R. Cant'--they look wonderful. We also have lilacs, wisteria, laburnums, and snowball bushes in bloom now, while tree peonies and 'Mollis' are leading off the glorious peony season. It's forecast to rain today, so I'm hopeful the garden will be watered, and that the thunderstorms that are also forecast won't wreck the flowers.

Anyway, Teas. They flop. It's a problem. What I've read on the forum has made me wary of pruning my Teas, and I've tried just letting them grow, spreading horizontally at first and then building upward. It doesn't work. They go out and out and never build up; they flop under their own weight; they break when it snows--we have heavy snowfalls fairly regularly--especially at points where they've been tied. I've been so intimidated about pruning (this is no one's fault but my own) that I haven't cut out damaged canes, so that the Teas don't make new growth, and the damaged canes suffer particularly in snows.

Well, after our tolerably destructive February snow, I was forced to do a lot of pruning of smashed canes; and I gritted my teeth and shortened some long, long canes on some of my leggier Teas like 'Mrs. B.R. Cant' and my mystery Tea in the bed by the house. I don't know that it did much good: young Miss Mystery is still about two meters wide and sprawling, as is Mrs. B. Take note that this is not excessive growth resulting from pampering: these roses are neither fertilized nor watered: they just grow and grow.

Good heavens, no one's advice works: I'm forced to think for myself. My current ideas are, first, that I will prune more: cut out more damaged canes, SLOWLY, thus renewing my plants, and shorten canes as well, since the Teas don't seem to mind. The big innovation is that I intend to support my Teas, by building cages around them of widely spaced rebar uprights, with bamboo horizontal supports. I think bamboos at 1' to 3' height, depending on the rose, should help. Some will have higher supports, like 'Mrs. B.R. Cant' which has the dimensions of a moderate climber, and 'Archduke Joseph', which we've been tying into the persimmon and which is now has most of its flowers best viewed from the bedroom on the second floor. This is not satisfactory. I think we might be able to achieve a sheet of bloom if we build a strong support in front and train some of the canes forward, while we keep the persimmon pruned, though this isn't easy on such sloping ground. Also the roses on the terraced area below the house, which is steep and getting steeper, really need support forward as they have only air in front of them. This ground looks as though it has subsided two to three vertical feet since we first terraced it; it does nothing to make gardening there easier.