“I can be changed by what happens to me,
but I refuse to be defeated by it.”
Maya Angelou

I will not lie, the shelter-in-place order has been a real challenge for me. I love being out and about taking classes, volunteering, exercising with friends. The first two weeks, I felt like an unanchored ship drifting aimlessly around the house in total shock. Then I remembered Angelou’s wise words on resilience and started slowly coming back to my old self. I drafted out a schedule with gardening playing a central role and then started thinking how the Peninsula Rose Society can reach out to members in a totally different way.

May is a great month to continue fertilizing your roses. Once your roses start to bloom, be ready to deadhead in order to achieve the maximum number of blooms and bloom cycles. Spray with neem oil early in the morning for insects. Lacy leaves are evidence of rose slugs. I found Sluggo works great for this. Cut out and remove leaves infected with rust and black spots and botrytis fungus. Botrytis can attack a wide range of plant parts, for example, it can attack buds, flowers, and leaves, stems and fruit. Be sure to practice good gardening hygiene by picking up and disposing of any diseased leaves in your city yard waste bin. Disinfect pruning shears as you work. Wash off the leaves infected with powdery mildew early in the morning. Remember to keep roses well-watered and water deeply. 

The Peninsula Rose Society refused to be defeated by the shelter in place order so we are continuing our monthly Peninsula Rose meetings via Zoom. Our April 21st meeting was the first meeting and it was a great success. Carol Coop was so pleased with how she handled Zoom she said “I never thought Zoom could be this easy”. At the meeting, we invited our members to participate in the Annual Rose Exhibit to be featured on our Peninsula Rose Society website in June. Members are encouraged to send a maximum of ten rose photos to Tomoko Lee, our talented webmaster. Rose photos will fall into three categories: roses in gardens, roses in arrangements, and a single or multi bloom rose. The submission deadline is May 15th. Please refer to Stuart Dalton’s, Carol Wong’s and Tomoko Lee’s guidelines starting on page 6 of this month’s Rosarian.

Every Thursday at 2 pm PRS has a Zoom social chat hour. Our first meeting was so fun, members were able to take virtual rose tours of Stuart Dalton’s and Carol Coop’s gardens. In addition, we solved rose care and technical challenges with Carol Coop and Tomoko Lee respectively. Chat participant, Deborah Rose, expressed how pleased she was with the PRS Zoom chats by saying, “It really lifted my spirits and distracted me from Covid to be with all of the lovely people.”

The PRS board members have been busy surveying its members to discover how to best communicate PRS news, whether it be blast emails, The Rosarian or the PRS Website. They also inquired on how comfortable and well-versed members are with technology. Remember you can also find PRS on Facebook. Stuart Dalton has been busy uploading beautiful rose photos.

Elizabeth Warren once said, ”Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you have lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.” I am proud to say the Peninsula Rose Society has put together something that’s good. We did not give up nor disband our lovely rose society, but instead, we reached out to our members virtually and together we all are coming out of this uncertain time stronger, wiser and more connected.

Patti Spezaferro