1 Everyone knows the poem that goes- Roses are Red, Violets are blue, Sugar is sweet and so are you!

2 But I am not talking poetry right now.  I am talking about the roses that Aunt Molly has in her yard.

3 Yeah you see the pictures of them. Aren’t they so beautiful?  How does she get them that way?

4 Notice the two pictures on the page.  The white roses come from a huge rose bush.  I call it a tree, it is so big!  My aunt started that one with a branch cut off of our Great Grandma Witt’s rose bush down in Centerville. She brought it home when Great Grandma was still alive. Grandma Witt told her to cut it off, wrap it in wet paper towels, put it in a bucket of red clay dirt from her front yard and take it home.  So my aunt did.

5 When she got home with it, she dug a deep hole in her back yard.  She put the clay dirt in first, then made another hole in the middle of that. Next she put in rose fertilizer to help it grow. Then she put in the branch from the rose bush.  After that she pushed the dirt in real tight. When she got ready to water it, she didn’t water it straight at the branch.  Instead she watered it slightly to the side of the hole at an angle.  She also took a banana peel the next day and wrapped it around where the bottom of the branch was at.  An old man had told her to do that whenever she planted rose bushes.  I had no idea that you could grow a rose bush just from a branch.  You can.  The rose bush will start to make new roots under the soil.  Bingo, a rose bush!

 

6 Now, look at the second red rose picture. This is a rose bush from Tyler, Texas.  That town is world famous for growing the best roses.  Aunt Molly bought that one about a year ago.  It was on sale, she said, or she would never have paid full price for it.  She put in on the side of her house near the carport. She had wanted to grow roses there for a long time.  At first, she told me that it was not looking very healthy and she knew why it had been on sale.  However, she kept pampering it, adding fresh clay soil around it.  Of course, she had to do the banana peel thing to it, too!  During the winter, Aunt Molly was afraid it was dead.  But to her surprise, it came back bigger than ever.  She said it produces cluster roses almost every week.

7 Well, apparently she knows how to grow roses.  It all seems to work just fine for Aunt Molly.