Hope your health is better this year. Take care of yourself before the roses.

Yikes, three hospital stays! Glad to hear that 2018 is better. Here's to your health, Steve. It is good to hear from you and may you enjoy your smaller rose garden even more.

I hope you're feeling better. 2017 was bad year over here also with 6 months straight of hospital duty. However, the winter wasn't as bad and everything survived if only to be decimated by pests. I never pruned. This year I was able to prune, manure, compost and mulch and everything is coming back great. Weather seems a bigger enemy so don't worry. Roses seem to be tough! P.S. What roses have thrived despite minimal care? Mine were New Dawn, Viking Queen, the Orleans Polyanthas, Kordes' Fire Opal, Red and Pink Drift and The Tooth Fairy. Munstead Wood,, Darcy Bussell and Dark Desire seem to require pruning and nutrition to be at their best.

Olympiad, Firefighter, PJP, Chrysler Imperial, Julia Child, St. Patrick, Just Joey. The Peace I got at Loewe's isn't doing that great but it never did as well as the others.

Glad to see you back on the forum Steve, and it's good to hear your lengthy health problems are resolving. You're reaping the benefits of your many deer cages so that the roses could take care of themselves and fend off the four footed vacuum cleaners until you recovered enough to enjoy them. Take it easy as you get out in the garden, and remember to see the positive side of the garden at first rather than fretting about what you still want to do for the future at first.

Cynthia

Deersteve, hopefully you’re healthy as a cow for the next 30 years! :-) I started rose gardening in the land of deer too! I am testing out some funky stuff to keep them away from fruit trees and roses, so far so good.

I tried all the funky stuff in the past, mountain lion urine, blood meal, hot pepper oil, deer sprays. Things work for a while and then they don't. I grew tomatoes for years and then the deer developed a taste. I had agapanthus for 25 years without the deer touching them and they are eaten to the ground and when they try to com back...

A physical barrier is the only thing that is 100% reliable. If I had a sunny area in my back yard, I would put up a tall fence. My front yard gets the sun and the roses are next to my house. The cages are easy to make, not anchored and easily removable. The beauty of the roses counteracts the ugliness of a cage. The cages only need to be high enough to be above browsing height and some bushes extend two feet above the cage.

Wow, you sure tried a lot of things. Right now I am using ribbons on roses, rose trees, fruit trees. it makes a lot of noises in the wind. I tested it out with 3 roses in the ground and 7 potted rose trees on the patio last fall. and I also added on LED string lights on the patio posts before the winter to keep the 3 in ground roses safe. Then this spring I found out I have rabbits there too, so I added on chicken wires around the 35 baby roses I just planted last weekend. Will set up the fishing line around all the fruit trees and roses this weekend. Do you want to try it on your tomatoes? :-) The roses are next to a patio, I hope deer won't go close to the house. I am trying all the easy stuff. I found the fishing line idea from here:

https://vomitingchicken.com/deer-fencing-cheap-and-easy-and-effective/

Here are a couple photos: fruit trees with ribbons and patio lights for keeping the 3 testing roses safe during the winter months:

I was able to fertilize, dead head, remove dead growth and light prune my roses. I spread it out over three days and used a folding chair. Years ago, I would do 10 times the work in one day. I started out without gloves and realized that was a bad idea. I found two gloves, both left so I need to buy some.

Could someone give me a link to rose discussions here. I am finding it very difficult to navigate. The houzz structure is a lot different than it was in the past.

Here’s a link. I notice on the left a list of any forums I’ve visited in the last year or so, but not alphabetized or organized at all. Glad to see you posting again!!

Roses forum

Steve boy am I slow. All of the times I’ve seen your user name and never noticed it was deer vs Steve. I need to grow younger again.

That had to be miserable dealing with illness. Gardeners seem to be active unable to rest individuals. When there is a moment to rest we work in the garden instead. Hope you can get a bit stronger each and every day.

Glad to hear from you, Steve! Best wishes for good health fo all of us!

Patty - After reading your post, I went buack up to Steve's last post...and you're right!!! Holy cow!! How could we both have missed that!! I'm astounded at how I totally missed that!

Carol

Steve - glad to see you posting again and good to know you're still keeping up the good fight. Wonderful that another month of patience was all it took to get you out there back at it again. So what if you used a chair while pruning? We all have to realize that we can't do what we used to do as we age; I know your difficulties were health not age related, but it's all the same. It takes some getting used to, but I've learned to modify my expectations. As long as I have roses to enjoy, I try not to worry over the areas that are less than perfect. (And I like what Summersrhythm said, may you be healthy as a cow for the next 30 years!) ;-)

Hmm, I dunno - the cow in my hamburger last night was not very healthy any more, though hopefully it was healthy before then. Let's hope you're HEALTHIER than a cow for 30+ years, and that your deer are healthy somewhere else.

Cynthia