My mom got a good one a couple of weeks ago. Being 90 her veins are close to the surface, she saw a weed in the planter and decided to go pull it (one would think she would have learned not to go in the beds after her bad fall...but no)

Bishops Castle got her right where 2 veins branched on her lower leg. Blood everywhere.

She did not mention it to me for several days and it is finally healing up.

Under a finger nail. Ouch!

Aw Kippy. Sorry about your mom. I bet her love of gardening is what is helping her to live a good long life though. I hope she will be completely healed soon.

I went shopping for eye protection and gloves after a close call with rose bush. I was concentrating so hard on that outside bud that I didn't see the other branch coming. I didn't think how pruning roses could be dangerous. After reading your story, Niptress, I will wear protective shoes as well. Ouch!

Several years ago I was cutting down a rambler that I intended to sp. Something flew into my eye; I tried to get it out ,but it ended up just rolling back into my head on the eyeball's surface. It was a terrible irritation all day, and at the end of my day's work, I went by the health clinic; luckily the eye doctor was there. He removed this large clump of organic stuff from the surface of my eye-ball-an incredibly nerve-wracking experience, believe me-and it turned out to be a rose thorn,lying flat on the surface of my eyeball...

up my nose - horrendously, I was tugging at a long cane which catapulted right back at me, flailing across my cheek and latching onto the tender inside surface of my nostril. The thorn came off the cane. embedding itself where I couldn't reach with tweezers. I ignored it as best I could until my nose started to swell.....whereupon a trip to A&E and a shot of antibiotics sorted it out......although I looked unsightly for a week or 2.

reminds me - a similar thing happened a few years ago when fishing for pike. My line was caught in water lettuce so I pulled hard and the line and hook came back and embedded itself into the side of my nose. Horribly, the hook was barbed so I had to push it right through my nostril in order to nip the end off with some needle pliers - have never, ever fancied body piercing of any kind.

Ugh! Thankfully I don't have any horror stories like these! My worst is like Susan's, under the finger nails. I've stepped on a few too but I don't leave clippings on the ground myself. I work barefoot in the garden all the time so when I prune the clippings go right into a bucket that I carry with me everywhere. Unfortunately the rabbits aren't so careful!

Bottom of my foot (why I no longer garden barefoot....) I thought I got it out, but the tip was still in and I had to have my husband dig it out.

garden barefoot!!! I have never even stepped in mine without full boot protection - even sandals would be considered a step too far. I don't wear shorts either (leather trousers) or garden without gloves......and I still manage to damage myself in numerous painful ways.

Guess I'm not the only one who considers gardening a contact sport! The scary one was a dart to the outside corner of my eye. That & dirt ricochet from pulling weeds or those seeds that fling themselves convinced me eye protection is essential, so glasses under the brim of a baseball cap. Trying to untangle a long braid from multiple rose stems proved comically difficult. Now it's tucked down the neck of a long sleeve denim overshirt. Those stretchy gloves with the nitrile palms & fingers that go in the wash deflect most thorns for routine stuff. Sometimes buckle on hinged knee pads, always long pants tucked into garden boots - I'm ready to rock & roll. One of these days I'll finally spring for the snake-proof boots for the woods, spring & stream. They ought to be thorn-proof as well! It's the wilderness out past the porch, and I love it.

I've tried using gloves, but doing so feels so awkward that I don't bother. I find that I grasp canes with two fingers, one at a time, and placing fingers between thorns, or in such a way as to "go with the grain". I am overly meticulous when I'm doing things in general, and that also applies to pruning (I'd never be an "efficient landscaper"). Sometimes I get poked, and once in a great while, a thorn will remain stuck in a finger as I pull away -- but I have yet had to resort to tweezers to pull them out. Then again, my time "handling" roses is far shorter than most who post here, so perhaps it's just a matter of time before I start cursing my bare-handed approach.

:-)

~Christopher

It would have to be right in the back of the head on the crown. I was out pruning this spring, and a gust of wind whipped up real quick. The tall lanky rose behind me bent right over and inserted itself in the back of my head! I had to reach up and pull the cane out of my head cause the thorn didn't break off.

I figured the rose behind me was just trying to get a better view of what I was doing, but man it hurt!

Josh

Camps, full boots and leather trousers... Try gardening in a properly warm climate in the summer in these.
Personally I've had my share of rose thorns all over my hands and arms but thankfully not in worse places. I'll tell you what's worse than getting rose thorns in the soles of your feet. Stepping on a sea urchin while going in for a swim.
Nik

Sorry double posting (for some obscure reason)..
Nik

This post was edited by nikthegreek on Thu, Mar 13, 14 at 14:38

I never actually gardened barefoot. I would be outside, just relaxing, and then something would catch my eye, and then I'd be in the rose bed, finger pruning.......

It's always so humid here that even in the early spring it gets hot and sticky quick out there in the sun. Shorts, T shirts or tanks, no shoes, no gloves or I'm swimming in sweat in no time. I have tiered beds and I have to be able to scramble up and down them to work on the roses. I've found I have much better sense of balance barefoot than in any kind of shoes. I've tried all kinds from flip flops to garden clogs to sneakers to boots and am never as stable on my feet as I am barefoot. I have limited sense of touch in my fingers and wearing garden gloves is like wearing boxing gloves or a baseball mitt for me. I'm terrified that I'll prune off a finger and not realize it, lol! I am always VERY careful out there though because I know that what I'm doing is dangerous and risky. Even still I do get injuries occasionally. I don't care how careful you are accidents happen to us all. And roses are sneaky, resentful and vengeful sometimes, lol!

Eeew - thorns in the nose! Eew, eew - bleeding and getting thwacked. EEW, EEW - eyes! I hadn't even considered that one but it's entirely plausible that we'd get a thorn straight in, given the speed with which those canes can whack back at you without warning. And people think rose gardening is this genteel safe tidy hobby (chortle) - we may need eye protectors more than mechanics at this rate.

I realized on reading these that I have had to dig the occasional rose thorn out of my scalp too, thankfully not in the back of the head yet as Josh mentioned, but from canes that get trapped in the hair on top of my head or in my ponytail. Nothing like pulling out a hank of hair AND getting a thorn in your head as you try to extricate yourself from a tough pruning job. I have to shampoo pretty gingerly in my post-pruning shower, since there are always bits of canes and other debris ground in after a long day.

And like many of us, I don't actually intend to garden barefoot any more than I intend to garden without gloves, or to lose my pruners every time I switch from pruning to deadheading. It just mysteriously seems to happen...

I hesitate to see what else may be on the horizon. We live dangerously

Cynthia

I've almost pruned a finger off once while pruning gloveless. Still have the mark to prove it. I knew I had oversharpened those Felco's... Going barefoot in the garden I would not even contemplate. Too many animate and inanimate dangers are lurking. Even sockless or in shorts is a very itchy proposition what with all the mosquitoes and the midgets. I usually wear garden clogs and long socks and wide pants.
Nik

True, leather trousers might be a bit hot and sweaty.....but in summer, I wear canvas pants. I don't care if I was gardening in Hades, I ALWAYS wear boots, summer, winter whatever - it would be madness not to, in my work as a landscaper.....although I don't wear steelies but stout Meindl boots. I do tend to injure myself, usually doing stuff 57 year old women should probably leave to their children (climbing in trees).

Lol, Camp, I do those things we more mature ladies shouldn't do too!

You all have to realize that I have a very old, well groomed and tame suburban lot. Not a farmstead or back woods lot. What isn't an edged bed is grass, pavers or concrete. Most of the hazards are my own doing, lol!

Under my big toenail! ouchhhhhhh!

No actual rose thorn left IN my skin, but I was attacking an 8ft 40 year old rose that I inherited at my new house, and that sucker sliced me across the tenderest part of my wrist. Still have a little scar. Looks like I tried to off myself and chickened out after one wrist...

Wow you guys, nasty, thorny tales!

My worst spot getting a thorn was in my head like Josh, altho not in the back. I was bent over weeding and stood up under a big branch on one of the hts (can't remember which one... but it was monstrously thorny). A gigantic thorn felt like it embedded deep in my head an inch or so into the hairline. I guess I must've gotten it out because I never did find it. However, it made me bleed like a stuck pig. My hair got all wet and blood ran down the side of my face. It was creepy. If anyone had seen me, they'd've thought I'd been whacked on the head with a hatchet or something. It healed up by morning and didn't bother me at all once it quit bleeding. Just was really weird.

Fortunately I don't have to choose between being lacerated by roses or dying of heat stroke, as our heat is dry and at night it cools down . I always wear sturdy shoes. Long pants, heavy, long-sleeved linen shirt in hot weather, whatever I have in the way of beat up garments in cold; gloves, which I slip on and off if I have to tie canes or do other fiddling tasks. Even if there weren't all the thorns, there are bugs and sun. My braided, pinned-up hair catches in thorns, too, and this summer when I go back to the U.S. on a visit I may look for the kind of hippy bandana I wore when I was eighteen. I wear glasses, too, so even my face has some protection, though not enough. I think my being a slow, inefficient, piddling (cautious) kind of gardener has perhaps kept me from the kinds of injuries reported here; maybe there's a kind of built-in protection in this way of working that banzai gardeners don't enjoy. Of course I could still fall out of a tree or off a ladder or terraced bed or from a rock.
Melissa

Under my finger nail and in the heel of my foot (deep). Being from Fl., I garden in shorts and barefoot. Still do it up here. I try to keep the garden clean so I usually don't step on anything that will cause me pain.

wondering where that gorgeous poster came from of the two women labeled "rose & Thorns"....is it buyable somewhere? Size? Thanks.

Hi Carol

I tried googling the poster you mentioned and nothing came up - in fact, nothing remotely rose related came up, though there were some fun family dinner table conversations to state your "rose" of the day and "thorn" of the day. If you can find a link, you might want to start a new thread on this topic, since people might not find it at the bottom of this one.

Resurrecting this one gives the chance to respond to some responses I'd missed back when. Yep, thorns wedged under nails are a nightmare, and once sent me to the urgent care center to get it removed when it got full of pus and infected. My twins were little at the time, so I got to prep them for how mommy had to have the doctor do something owie and she was going to be brave and not even cry (much). They seemed impressed, but it doesn't take much when you're two.

All of you that garden in protective gear are of course wise, though I've found that rose thorns can slash you through most clothing if persistent. I remember a rose cane getting stuck under my shirt at pruning time (probably the sneaky octopus Teasing Georgia). THOSE were scratches I was glad not to have to explain to folks at work. Littlelizzy - if anyone asks about the scar, you can say it wasn't suicide but cold-hearted murder attempts by a rose - hey, they're living creatures too! I envy those of you who are careful enough to hold roses barehanded without mishap. I can do it for a few moments, but I'm easily distracted when gardening, and disaster is always looming.

And Beth, that brings up an interesting point about rose thorns - sympathies on all the blood, BTW. Have any of you found that rose thorn punctures seem to bleed a lot longer than other types of pokes and injuries? I'll have a rose cane thwack me in the arm and wipe away blood from what seems like a small injury. Then a few moments later, there'll be a pea-sized swelling of blood that trails down my arm. Wipe that away, and it's back a minute later. This can go on for 10 minutes or more at times. I wonder if it's something related to the wedge shape of the thorns, that something that looks relatively innocuous is much deeper or wider than it looks. Regardless, it's one of the necessary hazards of rose gardening.

Seil - it's both encouraging and discouraging that these hazards are of my own doing. The positive is that I choose to rejoice that thorns have roses and put up with them for the flowers' sakes. The negative is that I'm doomed once the roses grow up to full height, since I plant everything much closer than custom or common sense would dictate, and I am reduced to a weird weaving stepping around the few tiny open spaces available come fall. No wonder the thorns are out to get me - I've asked for it.

Cynthia

My worst spot seemed like a normal, fine place to get one embedded: above the middle finger joint on the side, mostly. I thought I was lucky, because it didn't hit the joint. But it must have hit a blood vessel, because it turned purple quickly and swelled up. That ended up needing surgical intervention! I couldn't believe it. I get stuck in the fingers all the time, so it seemed like nothing.

I still don't wear gloves like I should, lol.