Zombie Roses
Growing up in the northeast, my grandmother had two rose bushes: one red, one yellow. On average, they produced a total of five blooms between them over the course of the entire summer. Instead of convincing me that these were poor, pathetic little rose bushes, I thought that they were the most magical things ever. I also thought that it took an entire field of rose bushes to create enough yield for a decent bouquet.
This one starts out a deep salmon color, then fades to yellow with pink accents.
As an adult, I relocated to California. Out here, roses grow big, bushy and with vigor that rivals backyard weeds. It’s a stunning contrast. But I quickly realized that allowing roses to grow on your property was not the same thing as properly tending to roses. When I moved into a house with no fewer than two dozen different varieties of roses, I was thrilled. Look at the beautiful flowers! There are red, pink, yellow, white and a combination yellow/coral that just stuns me every time. I had visions of beautiful bouquets of roses adorning my kitchen table.
And then I found the aphids.
These little brutes are eating my roses alive.
To say that I’m traumatized by the aphids is an understatement. They cover the poor rose blooms, rendering them unable to be brought inside.
I have tried all of the conventional methods for dealing with them. I’ve used chemical bug killers/fertilizers. I’ve blasted the roses with jets of water only to have wet plants still covered in aphids. I’ve released hundreds of ladybugs that look oh-so-lovely right before they fly away. Yet the aphids remain, sucking the life out of my beautiful flowers.
This website explains it as clearly as any: “They puncture the soft tissues and suck out the juices from the plant. Severe aphid invasion will cause leaves to curl up and die.”
So I’m trying to look on the bright side: rather than lament the presence of aphids, I have something far more interesting: zombie roses, with the juices sucked out of them.
