Southwest Sierra #105 – Climbing Roses

(Continued from last week) About 8 years ago, I rooted a bunch of Paul Scarlet Rose cuttings and planted them in one-gallon pots. I also rooted a cutting from a dark pink climber that grows in the location of another burned-down house. I don’t know the official name of the dark pink rose, but I call her “Frida,” after Doc Hardie’s wife. Doc Hardie was the town doctor during the 1930s mining boom. When my family moved to the area in the summer of 1975, the remains of the burned-down Hardie house across from the Tightner Mansion were fairly new. That house was rebuilt by the Hardies shortly after the big fire of 1933. Two large elm trees covered in ivy and the pink rose are all that remain of the once grand home.

I managed to sell or give away most of my rose starts but ended up with two leftover Paul Scarlets plus “Frida,” the pink rose. Every year, I tell myself that I need to get those roses in the ground, then another year goes by. In May of this year, I decided that I was going to “pop” them in the ground. I decided to plant them on a galvanized steel arbor that sits on the edge of the yard, about 50 feet from the house.

The arbor sits on a terrace that I built in the 1990s using old mill liner plates for the retaining walls. I salvaged the plates here and there around Alleghany. In the past, others had repurposed them to build retaining walls. I followed suit. The plates are solid iron, 9 inches wide, and 46 1/2 inches long. The thickness varies from 3/4 inch on one edge down to about 1/4 inch on the narrow edge. They are too heavy for me to lift, but I can flop them around end over end.

I built up the terraces with dirt from a county road project. The contractor had free dirt, and I told him where to dump it. I’ll never forget coming home from work at the 16 to 1 Mine office one day and finding the old apple tree in the yard completely submerged in a giant pile of dirt. I used a garden cart to haul the dirt about 50 feet downhill to build up the terraces. Dirt just disappears when you are trying to build up a flat spot on a slope. I used all that dirt and more to get the minimum terrace sizes that I wanted.

I didn’t think about what would happen with those heavy plates in the newly placed clay soil. They gradually sunk over the next few years until only the top edges were showing. At one point, I did redo the bottom retaining wall, and it still looked pretty good this year, but the bed was overgrown with poison oak, mugwort, wild plums, and a blackberry plant. In typical “one thing leads to another” fashion, my plan to “pop” those rose bushes in the ground turned into a month-long project. I had to completely dig out the terrace and sift the dirt to remove the roots of the plants that I didn’t want. Then, the mill plates that make up the retaining wall above that terrace had to be torn out and put back. I placed bricks or flat rocks under the bottom plate edges to help keep them from sinking.

Besides the Paul Scarlet and “Frida” rose, I have another climber that also came from the Hardies’ house. This one has very tiny pink flowers. It used to grow next to one of the Elm Trees, but the mother plant has since vanished in the ivy. Before the Fire Safe rule about not growing plants on buildings, I planted this diminutive rose on a wooden outbuilding. It wasn’t doing very well there, so this year, I decided to move it to the new spot along with the other roses. I accidentally broke the main root when I dug it up. I thought it was a goner, but it’s putting out new leaves.

The newly planted roses were given some kelp, watered deeply, and mulched. I put drippers on them for the summer. Once they are established, they shouldn’t need much water, but one drawback of retaining walls made of iron is that they absorb heat. I lined the inside of the mill plates with wood this year, hoping to mitigate the heat. That was David’s idea.

David originally built the Galvanized Pipe Trellis for me as a grape arbor in 1999. I planted two Interlaken Seedless Grapes on it. They did great for many years, but I quit watering them in the summer, and the nearby oak trees started shading the closer of the two vines. That vine died two years ago. The other vine is reviving itself with the recent TLC.

I remember one year in the early 2000s, the Interlaken Grape Vines were loaded with grapes. I’d been watching them closely for the right time to harvest. The day that I went out to pick them, they were gone! I figured a bear got them. About a year later, Alleghanian Jackie White thanked me for the grapes! She said that they made the best wine. Evidently,our son Wyatt picked the grapes and gave them to Jackie because he knew that she made wine. He never did let on. Jackie and I had a good laugh, but I was disappointed that the wine was gone and I didn’t even get to taste it.