Every Rose Bush Has It's Thorns

If you have a rose bush in your yard or have ever had experience with cutting one back, you know what I mean when I say, "OOOOOOUUUUCHHHHHH!"

Over a month ago, we had this massive thing growing in the corner of our backyard.

Ugly, right?  I'm sure once upon a time this rose bush was beautiful, but obviously it was never properly taken care of by the previous owners, which is how it ended up like this.  It was like a rose bush monster, waiting to eat prick whatever came near it. As you can see in the above picture, there were a lot of weeds entangled in this beast.  There was also a small tree growing inside of this thing. What?! Crazy, right?!  The weeds were easy to grab hold of and pull out.  The branches to the rose bush and the tree however, were not so easy to remove.  The first thing we did was clip the small/thin branches using a pair of garden pruners.  Here's just the first pile of branches that we clipped and pulled.

Once the little branches were out of the way, we started in on the thicker branches that were nearer the base of the plant. It didn't take us long to figure out that the thicker branches were not going to be cut so easily with the garden pruners.  Thankfully our dear neighbors had an electric saw that they let us borrow.  Here is a picture of our second pile of thorny branches:

It is kind of hard to see, but within this pile is a trellis.  Yes, behind that massive thorny beast there were two trellis' attached to the fence (or at least they used to be attached to the fence--I imagine they were once put there for the roses to climb).  After all was said and done, our rose bush looked like this:

Much better, except for the electrical boxes (I can still picture the first time the Time Warner guys came to hook up our internet/cable and they couldn't get to the boxes because of the rose bush---tragic).  You may also notice our green grimey fence back there.  I'm STILL working on that.

From the start of this project, we said that we were going to completely tear this bush out, but in the end, we decided to leave it (for now).  We have mulled over whether to completely take out the rose bush (they are just such a pain in the butt--figuratively and literally speaking) or to leave it and plant other flowers in that corner.  We've also talked about getting rid of the bush and putting sod over that whole area.  We will see what the future holds for this thorny creature.  

What we do know is that we are glad that this space is finally clear.  One of the main reasons we wanted to cut this down was because a.) it was awful to look at and b.) our dog, Buckeye decided it was a good idea to go under the rose bush and dig secret holes so that he could go play with the neighbor dogs.  Imagine our faces when our neighbor sent us this picture in a text:

Don't you love that he is smiling the whole time? Ha! What a naughty dog we have.  To put our minds at ease, we have since covered his holes (now that we can get to them!) with grass and wood chippings.   

This project took us about an hour or two to finish, but it was SO worth it to see a clear corner.  For all of you who have removed or cut back a rose bush, I think you will agree that the three words you would use to describe this project would be: Blood. Sweat. Tears.  Am I right?!

What are you getting into this weekend? We are in full cleaning mode for our guests that are coming next week.  Please remember that we do not post on weekends, since that is our time to complete projects (or clean the house) for you to view. We hope you have a wonderful weekend! :)