Switching from natives to roses on our mountain!

After much discussion and agonizing decisions, we have embarked on big changes here at my Sierra Foothill Garden! In this day of slow economy, we’ve had to look into turning our property into more of a money making operation, so I’m announcing that we have joined up with FTD flowers wholesale division and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Department of Agribusiness, to begin growing roses on a large scale, right here on our mountain.

This is what the growers are envisioning

Seeing that we are in the middle of a huge population of deer, a 10 foot chain link fence is being constructed starting today.  I’m so excited now that we’ve made the decision.  Everyone knows how much I love of roses and now I’ll be able to really get into the technical side of hybridizing that I’ve always dreamed about.

My dream!

The down side, of course, is that we’ll have to clear a lot, if not most of our land to make way for the greenhouses and growing fields. The bulldozers have started terracing the slope below the house, and one advantage is that the paths we’ve built will be wide enough for trucks to go in and out.

The land being cleared

I’m afraid the focus of my blog will turn from growing a relatively wild garden to reporting on the progress of the different varieties of bare roots going in and their development. They were delivered last week and we have a mountain to plant! Oh and my first unique hybridized rose will be called the “Sierra Foothill” rose. Yea!

In keeping with our organic practices, we are using farm animals for the plowing

I hope you’ll all join me and support me as we ‘switch gears’ and begin this new venture,…I’m sure I’ll need lots of advice, and the fact that we have begun it on this significant date, means even more to us as you know!

Joke!  Okay this is a joke…my sister’s the one who knew as soon as she read this…she knows me well.
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13 comments

  1. island threads -

    wow Sue you’ve blown me away, what a surprising post, I don’t know what to say just now except to wish you well with your new project and yes I will still be poping by to see what you are up too, good luck Frances

  2. Anna Flowergardengirl -

    Even after reading the whole thing—I was still thinking you were telling the truth. It wasn’t till I read the comments that it dawned on me. I was thinking how totally odd it seemed and not like you to plow up the land and plant roses. I was gonna root 😉 for you though.

  3. Donna -

    Ok you had me scared at first…although I would support you in whatever you chose…

  4. Sue Langley -

    Frances, I got you good!
    I’m pretty new to garden blogging and some don’t know what kind of gardening I like, but I hope I had some of you going for a little while. All the photos are from WikipediaCommons, the greenhouses in England, Charlotte, and Nell Jean, the ‘plow and cow’, I think is Vietnam, or somewhere. To all that said they support me in whatever, I love ya, too! Happy April Fool’s….they have that in Scotland, Frances?

  5. lostlandscape (James) -

    Fun post! But the un-fun part of it is that people are doing this very thing all the time, pulling out natives and replacing them with inappropriate exotics, though maybe without using the cow-plow.

  6. Desiree -

    Oh, man! I missed this on Friday! But I am pretty certain I would NOT have fallen for it, although now we’ll never know for sure, will we?

    I could just see you out there ploughing behind your ox!!!! 🙂

  7. Sue Langley -

    James, If you start thinking that way, then the whole of California is planted inappropriately, but add water and you can plant most anything here, at least in So Cal, so people do.

    Desiree, I’m sure you’d catch on. hahaha

    Okay, Brett, I moved the spoiler to the bottom. All the better to snag someone else, but I’m sure some will say.” Pfft! I’D never do that!” and think I was awful. hahaha

  8. Mary Ann -

    Sue, You had me believing it for a while. What a great April Fool Joke.
    Mary Ann

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