Growing Food and Kids

Today is guest post day in the WordCount 2010 Blogathon, and bloggers all over the Internet are swapping posts with other bloggers. Please welcome guest blogger Jodi Torpey, a Denver-based garden writer, master gardener and author of the book, “The Colorado Gardener’s Companion: An Insider’s Guide to Gardening in the Centennial State.” Her garden writing is published on gardening websites, in national gardening magazines and regional publications. You can find more of Jodi’s writing on her blog at WesternGardeners.com, VegetableGardener.com and on Twitter @WesternGardener.

I grew up in a mid-size city in Colorado with a mom who had too many things going on inside the house to be worried about the landscape outside the house. She didn’t plant flowers. We didn’t have a vegetable garden. There were no colorful containers overflowing with petunias. As long as the lawn got watered and mowed on a fairly regular basis, she was happy with her gardening efforts.

So it’s no surprise I was captivated by the one flowering plant in our yard — a beautiful red climbing rose. Every year that rose grew on its own. It wasn’t lovingly pruned and it certainly wasn’t babied with any special soils or rose fertilizers. It wasn’t protected from freezing temperatures with thick layers of mulch and there was no winter watering.

But every spring its canes would slowly turn from dry-brown to bright green and then little leaves would unfurl. By early summer it would be something fabulous to behold.

That’s why one of the first plants I added to the landscape at my new house was a climbing rose. I looked long and hard to find one with qualities similar to that red climber I remember so well.

That’s how the Rose Monster came to be.

The Rose Monster’s formal name is Rosa ‘John Cabot,’ a Canadian Explorer Series Hybrid Climber I found online at High Country Gardens. It arrived as two eight-inch tall stems and I planted them on each side of an arched arbor and let them grow.

The Rose Monster is now so tall and strong it actually holds the arbor together. Every spring, after months of cold weather, I watch as the long and wildly arching canes turn green and I look for little leaves to sprout. The rose show begins in June when the Monster is covered with hundreds of double-deep fuschia-pink flowers.

The Rose Monster isn’t only beautiful, it’s fragrant, too. In early morning it’s pure joy to step onto the patio, stand under the arbor and revel in its sweet scent.

I’m not the only one who loves these roses. Circular snippets cut from the leaves are used by native cutter bees to line their cells and serve as baby blankets for young bees. Bumblebees get so drunk on the Rose Monster’s nectar they practically stumble from one flower to the next before they lazily fly away. I’ve even caught my dog carefully sticking his nose into a blossom for a few quick sniffs.

I look forward to enjoying this climbing rose’s beauty for many years and taking good care of it—just like my mom took care of hers.

— Jodi Torpey

Photo credit: Jodi Torpey