Zealous Overgrowth

Here is a shot of one of my poor rose bushes. It is one of two miniatures that I planted last summer out in the front of the house. Both of them grew to be about 14 inches tall and bloomed all summer last summer. This year they both were blooming and were doing real good until the bushes next to them took off. Shame on me, I got too busy in July and didn’t get the bushes pruned back before they flowered. Once they did flower the bushes grew to be about twice the size they were and totally engulfed the rose bushes. Today I cut back the bushes drastically. Now you see the results, the roses have lost all their blooms and most of their leaves. Hopefully there will be enough summer left for the roses to recover. Next spring, if not this fall, the bushes are history. They are really nice bushes but I noticed a few weeks ago that there are the same bushes where I work and they were over 8 ft tall. I really don’t want an eight foot hedge at my front porch.

Both the bushes and the roses were healthy, just one of them was able to grow a whole lot faster than the other one and took up all the room and sunlight that they both needed. Just like the roses we all can’t grow at the same space and if we do grow fast we might just take over where we don’t belong. We all need to watch out that we don’t get too over zealous and outgrow where we are planted.