Roses. 02/09/05
As I was leaving the house this morning I realized that the lovely flowering rosebushes I had planted in pots around the house had been chopped in half -- no more blooms, no more leaves, just short bare sticks sticking up out of the dirt. The big rosebush among the hedges was mutilated as well. All the clover, ivy and herbs in the rosebush pots had been ripped out of the ground entirely. And my dormant yellow rosebush was no longer there at all, it was completely dug up!?
Furiously, I walked to work, building up quite a bit of steam and sweating even though it's a freezing cold day. I composed my thoughts into rational sentences and once I got to work I called up the landlady. "I would like to request that the landscaping crew not chop any of the rosebushes and other plants that I have planted in the pots around the outside of the house," I said. The easily excitable landlady became as outraged as I was at the cackhanded incompetence of our "landscaping" service. "They did WHAT?!?!?" she cried.
She plans to call and write letters to her clueless "Mow and Blow" service as soon as possible. Steve and I have been complaining about the lousy job these guys do for 4 years now, it is incomprehensible to me why she hasn't just hired someone else. But whatever. This is the first time I have called the landlady myself, for any reason, in all the time I've lived there, because frankly I'm scared of dealing directly with crazy people.
And I had gotten the red rosebush to have new bright green leaves and FULL BLOOMS in the middle of January! Watering it with miracle-gro fertilizer, spraying the anti-bug spray on the leaves, carefully pruning and trimming for maximum flowering. Yesterday: lovely red roses. Today: bare dead-looking branches. Aaaargh.
I have just looked in the mirror for the first time since leaving the house. I wonder how long I've had a big brown coffee spot on the end of my nose... Must learn to slurp my liquid energy more carefully.
