Jim and I returned a few days ago from a whirlwind trip to San Diego to visit our son, Joe, who has just returned to that beautiful city after a yearlong assignment with the Coast Guard in Bahrain. The weather was gorgeous; the food was fantastic; and the company was superb. Yet I couldn’t wait to get back home. I was worried about the front garden.April, May, and June were lovely this year; the daffodils and tulips put on a show, and the spring-blooming flowers performed exactly the way they should have. Since then, I have been disappointed in the flowering of some of my perennial shrubs. I am not counting the daylily and azalea blossoms that were raided by our Gang of Seven deer; the depredation of those plants was not unexpected.
I was disappointed that my Old Garden Roses produced so few blossoms, especially since all but one, Autumn Damask, bloom only once a year. The others, including the Apothecary’s Rose and Rosa Mundi, also performed poorly; both of these lovely shrubs normall...