Tamed for dormancy

Just one night ago I listened to a great dharma talk at my sangha.
It was about the Wild Side vs. The side of Restraint.

As I was pruning a rose garden in blissful quiet I kept on thinking back to this dharma talk.
Should I prune a bit harder ? Should I show some restraint ? Should I let a particular climbing rose go a little bit more wild ?

In the end , I hope I found The Middle Path.

Some roses really required severe renovation pruning. They had a lot of dead wood and their frameworks were in poor condition. I went wild.

Other roses were quite well taken care of and it was obvious how much pruning they would need.

Then there was the question of , " do I prune for show quality or production quality ? ".

Again I took the middle road and did not go too wild with the shears but also didn't show too much restraint either.

The thing with pruning roses though, is that I have some time to fine tune a few of the cuts if I want to within the next month or two, Then as the summer season progresses I will have another chance to go wild or show restraint with mid season pruning.

From California Gardening