After struggling for five years to care for what I now regard as an unmanageable collection of over 3000 unique roses, I have come to a conclusion: I can’t do it. There has been a shrinking of greenhouse inventory for three years now (this continues) and large sections of the open garden have now been left to fend for themselves, and the last section to come under scrutiny is the Ralph Moore collection. Although I have been able (with the assistance of a hired helper) to keep it reasonably well-groomed and sprayed in the past decade, I have decided it too must be scaled back to a more manageable size. And so, with great misgivings I am going to select only the 30 or 40 varieties I feel are the most meritorious/most rare and all the rest must be removed and discarded.
Now, I won’t actually be digging plants out until September/October, so there is time to organize and distribute some of these plants. Anyone wanting to acquire any of the Moore roses should speak up ASAP and we can make arrangements for digging and removing them. (Local folks can come dig anytime they have an opportunity, I guess, as long as they have a plan for re-establishing the plants in mid-Summer conditions)
The way I see it is this: without a staff (as I had for a long while) I can’t be expected to continue to act as an official Moore archivist, as I had long considered my role. Nobody is paying me to do it, and in fact it is costing me quite a bit in time, materials and hired assistance ($$$) to maintain. I have decided it has become unreasonably unwieldy and has to be addressed, since it now brings me nothing but frustration and unhappiness to step out into the roses where all I see is hundreds of hours of work that I cannot possibly do. So be it. I have had many people in my life wisely tell me that once something is no longer fun to do, then just stop doing it. Life is too short to be burdened by activities that bring you frustration and angst.
You know how to reach me.
Paul