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kippy_the_hippy

Rose Funnies

Kippy
11 years ago

I thought I would start a topic on what funny thing related to roses anyone saw, heard or read.

To start,
I went to the local craft store, after making my purchase and heading out I walked past their display of new fake flowers.

It included roses complete with pink Botrytis spots all over the outer petals.

(had to wonder where the rusty roses were)

Comments (45)

  • onederw
    11 years ago

    Great idea for a thread, Kippy.

    My favorite laugh out loud moment came on a walk. My DH and I walk regularly through the "estate" area of Pasadena and San Marino in the vicinity of the Huntington Library and Gardens. (Estates, mansions, stately homes. . . whatever.)
    Apparently, the installation of drought tolerant landscaping is all the rage among the .002 percent. We saw grand property after property sporting newly planted agaves, sedums, etc.

    Why is that funny? Almost all of them had roses in the same planting beds. (Insert sound of my palm striking my forehead here.) Depending on who wins the tug of war (or should I say tug of water?), they'll either drown the cacti and succulents, or parch the roses.

    Kay

  • TNY78
    11 years ago

    I know a few months ago I shared the story of trying to sneak a 3 gallon potted rose in from France by stuffing it in my luggage and getting a few hundred dollar fine in the process when US Customs found it at the Philidelphia Airport....not funny at the time, but funny in hindsight...

    The other, more recent, rose funny is that a bodybag rose I purchased a couple of days ago ( yes, bodybag rose shame shame), had a scratch and sniff sticker on its packaging to allow buyers to sample the roses scent...I dont know if its something new this year, or I just never noticed it before. Either way, its a little absurd...but funny!!!

    Tammy

    This post was edited by TNY78 on Tue, Feb 26, 13 at 16:31

  • eahamel
    11 years ago

    Here's one of my rose funnies. This bit of landscaping just showed up in a yard in my neighborhood. Good luck to them.

  • annesfbay
    11 years ago

    Big, fluffy poodle trying to retrieve ball from under huge 'Mermaid.' He has become quite adept at it and hasn't needed rescuing in a couple of years! However, he will routinely prance across the yard with rose twigs caught and trailing from his ear fur or tail fur.

    Anne

  • ingrid_vc so. CA zone 9
    11 years ago

    They'll certainly need the good luck, not to mention that the raised areas, including the little one on the right, look well...........ridiculous.

  • lola-lemon
    11 years ago

    Eahamel- Poor folks and their under tree roses.... I also enjoy their quick and easy "pour a pile of dirt on the ground and call it done" temporary raised beds --

    BTW- I mean sad not economically challenged (poor)

    This post was edited by lola-lemon on Tue, Feb 26, 13 at 13:24

  • TNY78
    11 years ago

    At least when I planted Candy Land under my magnolia tree the other day it wasnt under an oak tree LOL...its just a jane magnolia so it doesnt even get very big or shady :)

    .and the poodle thing just cracks me up! More than once I've had to pull branches and rose canes out of my collie mixes hair!

    Tammy

  • TNY78
    11 years ago

    At least when I planted Candy Land under my magnolia tree the other day it wasnt under an oak tree LOL...its just a jane magnolia so it doesnt even get very big or shady :)

    .and the poodle thing just cracks me up! More than once I've had to pull branches and rose canes out of my collie mixes hair!

    Tammy

  • TNY78
    11 years ago

    Oh my gosh....I did not mean to post that three times! I think because I was posting it from my phone and hit the "back" button it got confused....anyway, sorry :(

    Tammy

    This post was edited by TNY78 on Tue, Feb 26, 13 at 14:03

  • eahamel
    11 years ago

    Tammy, I just planted Magnolia 'Ann' this morning! Very similar tree, both are in the "little girl" series.

    Lola, yes, I wonder how long that dirt "donut" around the tree will last, too. A lot of people in my neighborhood are from Mexico and have no idea what they're doing. I've seen some really interesting and short-lived landscaping here.

  • harryshoe zone6 eastern Pennsylvania
    11 years ago

    Does walking too close to Tamora and having her monster thorns rip out the seat of my pants count? How about in front of witnesses? How about if I wasn't wearing underwear?

  • roseseek
    11 years ago

    Harryshoe, TMI! TMI! LOL! Kim

  • harmonyp
    11 years ago

    I think the funniest part of harryshoe's post is imagining the faces of all the readers of that post!!!

  • mzstitch
    11 years ago

    Smuggling in a rose plant in your luggage, now that is hysterical. Expensive fines, but you'll get your moneys worth telling that story!

  • floridarosez9 Morgan
    11 years ago

    Well, it's kind of funny sad, not funny ha-ha, but the "professional" landscapers all over central Florida do mass plantings of loropetalum, Knockout roses, etc., but they plant them like annuals, less than a foot apart. It's the funniest looking mess after a year or so and has to be redone. What a waste of money, waste of time, and none of the plants are healthy because they're so crowded.

    Funny ha-ha, but only in retrospect, and some of you may remember this, was the time I was in the swamp digging up white ginger lilies and wild roses and my shovel broke. I fell on my fanny in a ditch that I had jumped to get in the swamp, which ditch was full of mucky water, weeds, snakes, and the occasional alligator. I don't know that I've ever moved so fast as I did getting out of that ditch--but, Harry, I did have on underwear.

  • roseseek
    11 years ago

    Over crowding new plantings seems a universal curse, floridarose. It happens out here all the time, too. As if seeing any soil between the plants means you've been short changed. Sad.

    Long before there were color sports of it, a customer told me she just loved Iceberg, then asked, 'What other colors does it come in?" OK

    I had to walk away from the lady complaining about the actually very good local garden center because all of the roses she bought there died. I ran through the diagnosis list to see if I could figure out what went wrong. She never removed them from the body bags, but plugged the holes with them like stoppers in bottles. Of course it WASN'T her fault as they didn't TELL her to take them out of the bags.

    I've encountered many issues of hard collisions between my backside and the cold, hard, ground, too, which is why I have only used fiberglass handled shovels for years. I've broken the blade off one, and cracked two handles but my posterior hasn't been nearly as bruised as it was when I used wooden handled tools. I pay a little more for them, but the comfort of my b--tt is worth it! Kim

  • lola-lemon
    11 years ago

    OH my gosh that is funny about the roses being planted in their bags. I bet she got the idea from the Jackson Perkins roses which they told you to plant in the cardboard box they came in (was supposed to break down, but never did).

    Ok, this isn't about a rose, but it is a garden funny. When I first moved in to my house I could not figure out how the heck I kept having to grub out Walnut seedlings right next to my house when the closest walnut was a block away. then I was reading that Yew (or is it Laurel?) pop their seeds up to 15 or 20 feet away or something and so I figured at some point that walnut was blasting walnuts around the neighborhood. LOL.
    Then the neighbor pointed out that squirrels like to bury them. DUH.

    another time I was at a big box store- to remain nameless- trying to buy the only healthy and blooming naiobe clematis which was mismarked as a Nelly Moser. Because I keep the labels, I asked if I could take one of the Naiobe markers from another plant (swap them).
    I was told NO. That I most likely truly was holding a Nelly Moser and that she figured the bees had pollinated it after visiting Nelly Moser-- and it had caused the flower to bloom Nellly. Her example was that her cucumbers were planted near pumpkins and had all turned fat and orange because they were interpollinated (and now halfbreeds)with pumpkins in the summer. (If you grow vegetables, you know you need to pick cucumbers when they are GREEN)
    I didn't ever get that Naiobe marker.

  • anntn6b
    11 years ago

    Years ago listening to a very nice clerk at Mayo Garden Center in Knoxville explain, over the phone, that the caller didn't need to kill all those long brown worms in her soils.

    A personal one: my husband has always liked our bushes of the Tea Rose Safrano. So when the HBO series based on a crime family went on the air, he assumed they were The Safranos, because the name Sopranos made less sense to him than Safranos did.

  • roseseek
    11 years ago

    That's funny, Ann! It reminds me of a friend whose little boy used to call Cecile Brunner, "Ka-ceel Bloomer". Kim

  • eahamel
    11 years ago

    Lolal,l a lot of people think that if a bee pollinates a flower from another type of plant, that's what the fruit will be! I've had people tell me their sweet pepper was pollinated by a hot one because they were hot instead of sweet. Mis-labeled at the store is more like it.

  • eahamel
    11 years ago

    I know someone who thinks that when the stem with a rose on it turns brown after it blooms, you have to remove it or it will kill the entire cane. He also thinks that transplanting a flower can change its color. He thinks this because he grew morning glories from seed, and transplanted one of them, and it was a different color from the ones he didn't transplant. I explained about genetics, but I don't think he believed me.

    He also thinks that Starbucks has a really nasty coffee, that people eat the beans, and when they have passed through the digestive tract,they're collected and made into coffee. He refuses to go to Starbucks because someone told him that. I couldn't convince him that was really, really not true for many reasons.

  • lola-lemon
    11 years ago

    Actually eahmel, there IS a very very expensive coffee that has been eaten and pooped out by some animal. It's like $60 a cup or something. So, he won't accidentally get any of that at a starbucks when he buys a drip for $2. I now this because my husband is a real coffee fanatic- tho he is too frugal to splurge on poop coffee.

    OK, I just looked it up- in Thailand it's $500 for a pound of elephant predigested coffee beans. Sometimes they use civet cats.

  • roseseek
    11 years ago

    Lola, your fact about using civet cats brought to mind the Two and a Half men lines about Charlie convincing Alan the stuff in the cat litter box was Almond Roca, so he ate it. Charlie said, "By the second piece, even the cat was laughing!" I remember reading about the "predigested coffee beans" and though I like coffee, there is no way I could stomach that, much less Starbuck's burned, over priced coffee. Give me 7-11 regular blend over theirs any day! kim

  • TNY78
    11 years ago

    oh my gosh....I don't check this post for a few hours and suddly everyone is talking about COFFEE POOP!!! lol....I love our gross little Rose Forum family :)

    Tammy

  • Kippy
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Coffee, it is late but it sounds good!

    There is a local guy who writes about "crimes on Nature" or something like that about the horrors he sees in local gardens. Be it making "balls" out of hedges or whacking things to the ground, some times it is funny, other times you think to your self...hmm is that my yard? (if he saw my zapote tree I would be a winner-of course if he had my zapote tree before all the hacking...I would laugh)

  • NewGirlinNorCal
    11 years ago

    Kippy- Crimes Against Horticulture! I've "friended" him on facebook.

    My funny story to share was the time I lovingly carted a bramble home from my parents' place in Bodega Bay, CA, convinced I was going to lovingly nurse this poor OId Garden Rose back to splendor. To be fair, it looked a heck of a lot like the rose it was growing next to. But still.

  • carol6ma_7ari
    11 years ago

    How about Joan Crawford (played by Faye Dunaway) cutting down her prized rose bushes after MGM fires her? Campy scene when I first saw the movie, but now that I grow roses, horrifying!

  • Kippy
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Thanks NewGirl!

    He does write some interesting articles-I used to volunteer with his wife on a non garden group eons ago.

    The last story he did on "waste" water was interesting, he talked about saving the rain water your property gets and using it rather than sending it to the street for the city to deal with. Something SoCal gardeners really need to learn to do.

    And he writes regularly about removing grass lawns and replacing with something SoCal friendly.

  • eahamel
    11 years ago

    newgirl, thanks for the Crimes Against Horticulture - I also "liked" them, and it's hilarious!

  • cactusjoe1
    11 years ago

    Called for advice about a work acquaintance's and neophyte gardener's newly planted dozen bareroot roses - they were all dead. "Impossible!" - you say?

    Turned out that she thought the root stocks were what were used to grow the roses to marketable sizes, to be discarded when she planted the roses. All 12 of the poor roses were planted, minus their roots, which had been carefully pruned off at the bud union and discarded.

    I did not have the heart to tell her that never in my many years of gardening have I seen anything quite like it.

  • kittymoonbeam
    11 years ago

    I wanted to share some mulch with a lady down the street for her roses because they are on bare hard earth and she has a difficult time weeding them. Another problem is that the sprinkler water just runs off that compacted ground. I suggested that the mulch would fix those problems over time but she didn't want to try it because the sow bugs would live there and eat the roots and also at night they would "crawl up the stems and eat the flowers clean away". You know, the killer California sowbugs that are worse than JBs.

  • harmonyp
    11 years ago

    Cactus Joe - well they were supposed to be "bare" of roots, right?! What a hoot!!!

  • onederw
    11 years ago

    Cactus Joe-- Your tale calls to mind a beloved quote from Mark Twain: What a shame that stupidity isn't painful!

    Kay

  • roseseek
    11 years ago

    That's where the bumper sticker came from..."Stupid should hurt!" Kim

  • socks
    11 years ago

    Nothin' funny in my rose garden which is right next to the street, but once I did look out the window and saw someone struggling in the dirt in the rose bed. I went out to investigate, and a poor woman had fallen off her bike into the roses, and every time she tried to get up a bush snagged her. Ouchie! I helped her extract herself.

  • intris
    11 years ago

    This might not be as funny, but I saw a tiny little bird perch itself on my queen elizabeth outside today. He sat on one of the larger canes and looked at the new leaf growth and then hopped on another perch to look at another site of new leaf growth. He almost had an angry expression of "THIS ISN'T FOOD?!?!?!" and flew off in disappointment.

  • cactusjoe1
    11 years ago

    Yes, funny, but very sad at first. I couldn't help feeling the pain of 12 good roses turned to brown twigs. And it was not an encouraging introduction to gardening for the poor lady.

  • seil zone 6b MI
    11 years ago

    Gosh, other than my own trips and slips I can't think of anything as weird/odd/funny as these stories. I must be either very careful or very lucky!

    I'll have to check out that Crimes Against Horticulture though, Sounds like a hoot!

  • roseseek
    11 years ago

    Seil, it's more likely due to your "speaking plant", and THINKING before you DO. Kim

  • squeakmommy
    11 years ago

    When I first saw the picture of the roses under the tree, before I read the post, I thought it was a grave! It's a shame that same thought did not occur to the person who created those plantings.

  • Kippy
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Just back from discovering the local nursery has it's rose field open.

    There was a guy that was giving the staff a hard time, demanding that he needed a 15g Don Juan on a trellis. The idea that they grow and train the roses themselves and did not register. He kept saying "Well call some one up and order one". They told him several times "there is no one to order that rose from, we grow the ones you see here and we would have to pay more than we could sell it for if we found one, but we can start you one for next season" . (they have a large lot and have many roses that are rather old or unusual from the box store selections (like a 60" standard Renae)

    That was one unhappy customer!

  • roseseek
    10 years ago

    Too bad you couldn't have told him he wasn't where he thought he was. For that Don Juan, he needed to go to Otto & Sons and drag the blamed thing home himself. The nursery probably won't order from Otto because of the minimum order, cost and needing to sell what they've bought and grown. I don't blame them. Kim

  • Kippy
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    I thought about telling him try Otto, (or how much would he pay for mine?...LOL)

    Don Juan is pretty common, but he thought if they listed it at a 5g price they had to stock it in all of the sizes. They have some massive roses on BIG trellises, but you can't do that with every rose.

  • jerijen
    10 years ago

    I'm not sure even Otto would have Don Juan in that size.

    Jeri

  • jim1961 / Central Pennsylvania / Zone 6
    10 years ago

    While putting down some mulch a mouse ran up my arm on to my shoulder than leaped off...
    I screamed very loud...LOL
    I had thoughts of that Ben movie...lol