After planting the easy Knockout Roses, which are looking better and better with each passing day (they started as tiny sticks of wood and have blossomed so quickly I hardly recognize them), I made the leap into the more “serious”, higher maintenance rose families this afternoon. I went to my local nursery and bought two young rose bushes as my family was back at home making a new homemade chicken enchilada recipe – just because we started the gardening thing doesn’t mean the food obsession ended – a Dick Clark rose bush, which produces large cream and cherry roses that have a strong cinnamon-like scent, and the Cherry Parfait rose bush, which products roses with a light fragrance but are a combination of a slightly different white and red.
Both came from a growing company called Weeksroses. Here are the official pictures of the product they have on their website. (They didn’t have any of the rose types I posted the other day so I will have to order those online.)
Right now, they are sitting on my front sidewalk basking in the sun. I’m hoping to get them planted tomorrow but I’ll need to call the utility people to mark the lines as I want to put them around a light post that will be replaced later this summer once I’ve settled on a final style. The problem I’m running into is that so much of my house is shaded by large, mature trees that keep it cool, make a wonderful sound when it is windy or rainy, and are visually interesting in the autumn, that I don’t have a lot of space as roses require 6+ hours of full sun daily.
What appeals to me about these is that, just like a well-bought investment, if I keep up on the rose bushes with a small amount of work, they can produce a stream of roses for me to use in my home and office year after year. I like annuity streams, even in my landscaping, apparently.
I need to try and update the blog more often. Yesterday, I spent the day with a huge part of my family visiting my Aunt Donna, then went on a productivity kick upon returning home that I knocked a lot of stuff off my agenda. I approved disbursements for a ton of bills, including the final legal cost of the buyout, we got the entire back porch planted, the groceries were restocked, the house was cleaned, I called and made changes to my homeowners insurance policy, I worked on restructuring the few liabilities I allow my household to carry, lowering the fixed-rate interest cost even further, even though our net expense is lower than the rate of inflation. By the time it’s done, just like now, I’ll be paid, in real after-tax terms, improving my compensation rate to around 1% to 2% per year of the total outstanding balance, which is why I can’t bring myself to wipe out the liabilities despite my hatred of debt, especially when oil stocks are yielding 4% to 6% and can be shoved into tax shelters. I’ll need to write a post about that because the economics are beautiful, and the future difference in wealth staggering, because I’m essentially arbitraging the tax code and time. It’s my own version of cost-free float that poses no risk to my financial health, while helping increase my returns over the decades.
Otherwise, nothing much is new. I can smell the food now, so I need to go see if there is something I can sneak away before anyone notices because I’m hungry. There is a large bowl of cut strawberries that are going to be used for dessert; I might be able to get some and make a clean getaway.
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