"A Killarney, perhaps," I suggested. 
"Yes, that's it," he said. 
"Doesn't it mildew here between the shrubs?" I asked. 
"Yes, it mildews somethin' awful during the rainy season, but it is 
bloomin' fine now." And bloom it did with a vigor and boldness that 
would have seemed ostentatious in our gardens. 
"It is a huge plant," I said. "How long has it been in?" 
"I planted it just four years ago this month," he answered. 
I looked at him in amazement. "But roses were in bloom then," 
I said. 
"Oh, that don't make no difference, that there rose is what we call 
a canned rose. It came with three big stalks almost the size of my 
thumb. I just run an opener down one side of the can, up the other, 
spread it apart and set the roots in the ground just the shape of a 
boiled puddin'." 
I gasped a little and said, "It looks a little one sided, did the wind 
break it?" 
"Oh, no," he responded, "when I wanted to prune it and water it, 
and start it up, I only had a pair of light pruning shears handy. The 
wood is awful tough, so I took a hatchet to it, and the hatchet kinder 
slipped." 
I said "thank you" in a tone of voice that sounded as if such pro- 
cedure was the custom of my own rose garden, and went on my way, 
convinced that if my hatchet pruning friend could hear the history of 
care and prevention I had in store for you, he would think my mind 
had "kinder slipped." For growing teas and hybrid teas in this 
climate is a concentration of effort to overcome the rigors of the winters 
and the pests that nature has put in our way. If I were writing a 
rose paper in California, I might try to be poetical and rapsodize on 
form, color and fragrance, but to-day's subject is of the earth earthy 
and I can only venture as far as, 
A blight, a spray, 
A rainy day, 
And mildew's sure to find us, 
A bug, a can, 
A heartless man 
And one more pest behind us. 
So good-bye, California, where roses run riot, and where the prayer 
for next year is not for increase of growth, but for deliverance from it, 
and back to sunny foggy, hot cold, Long Island where the recipes for 
preparing rose gardens have to be as exact as those for preparing cake. 
