I had a plan, the 1:1 adaptor (magnifier) was attached to my macro lens for a reason.

No, it wasn't there to take more pictures of water drops on rose buds.

And it wasn't there for getting lost in bokeh land. Wait a minute .  .  . these pictures are of deer netting.

I soon forgot my plans for the macro adaptor– deer netting is more of my moment these days, and I thought maybe you'd like to know about it too.

Take a look at the fence in the background, in the photo on the left. That's our 6-foot high deer fence. It's covered with climbing roses, and the deer don't touch it. The property outside the fence used to be very narrow, until the road was changed, and a 1000 sq. ft. strip was added to our property. Of course, I was not going to plant roses out there. Oh yeah? Maybe just a few roses . . .

This year alone, I've added about ten new roses to this area, and each day I uncover them in the morning and then re-cover them before dark. It's all about my love for letting roses reach their maximum growth habit. No, I can't resist– more land means more roses in my world. Many of the roses are once-bloomers, so I'm especially vigilant in the spring. Once they've stopped blooming, I'll ease up on the netting.

As the roses I chose for this area reach maturity, they become increasingly drought tolerant. And many rose buds on large shrubs are out of reach to deer. So in the future I'm hoping for a fairly carefree rose paradise.

This is the most recent netting product I've used. One hundred feet goes a long way, as I cut it into large pieces to cover the bigger roses.

They remember me as this shy girl sitting under the table. But they obviously didn't know what was going on in my head.

~Isabella Scorupco (Polish actress b. 1970)

Rose behavior often reminds me of humans. Take first blooms, they frequently appear in the oddest places, as if the rose is shy to show herself, even though she feels, or even knows, she is quite stunning to look at. Yesterday, I caught Perle d'Or's first bloom, not front and center, but over on the side near the bottom.

This rose is a wonderful Polyantha, reaching 6-feet or more and rarely out of bloom. I think of it as a valued [deciduous] garden shrub, because of the graceful form it takes.

If you don't have room for the big gal, Jim Delahanty just wrote me on FB that there is a great miniature rose called Petite Perle d'Or. Available at Burlington Roses.

Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades. ~Boris Pasternak

Here are sweet peas, on tip toe for flight:

 With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white,

And taper fingers catching at all things,

To bind them all about with tiny rings.

~John Keats