Cats in the Rose Garden

Cats in the Garden: Why They Matter

Buddy stands guard in front of Honorine de Brabant, a Bourbon rose

Independent spirit aside, a domestic cat can be a great asset in the garden. It isn't every day we consider America's most popular household pet as a tool, but they are as useful as a rake, shovel, or hose.

One can't judge their effectiveness, however, based on their ability to get human tasks done. That's unfair. They don't have thumbs. The claws and jaws can hold onto a wide range of items that attract and hold their attention, but don't expect much in the fetch department. It's not their thing, even though they love a good chase after a tossed rose hip.

Freddy shows me where to pull more weeds.

They are natural-born hunters, even the laziest and clumsiest in the species. They will often prove their prowess by depositing a dead critter at your doorstep just to reassure you they can get their prey.

Andy suggests I remove this tree root before I plant a rose bush.

Here's what they are best at and why all gardeners should have one or more by their side.

1. They are always ready to entertain you, turning routine chores into much more bearable tasks. Yes, it was only yesterday when you weeded the entire garden, but a lot can happen over just a week, and it's soon time to do it again. With a cat next to you chasing the end of a particularly long blade of grass, you will forget about the drudgery. When your mind has wandered off as you trudge onward into the second or third hour of digging, pulling, and discarding weeds and grass, and a white paw emerges from the undergrowth to smack your glove, it is a gesture to bring you to reality. It's proven to lower your blood pressure, too, and has produced barrel laughs from me as I sat alone in the garden.

A dusty Andy Boy telling me this rose with one straggly cane isn't worth saving.

2. Cats have an extraordinary ability to investigate most things they deem as new or unusual. That will make you think, is the hole too big? Is it too shallow? Did you prune enough of the bush so they can complete a cheek rub and, thereby, leave a strong scent-marking telling other cats to get lost?

Andy Boy reassures me that leaves will make a comfortable ground cover.

3. By their very presence, cats can deter a wide variety of animals such as moles, voles, and gophers. They will persist in routing them out and causing them to go elsewhere, as long as the invasion doesn't outnumber one poor feline. Admittedly, my yard is in the center of a vast neighborhood of single-family homes, far from any park, natural area, stream bed, or open space, and I've been rodent-free for years. Yep, no rats or mice ever make it from the yard to the house. Unless, of course, they are gifts from a proud hunter.

Andy Boy is tangled up in Crépascule, a hybrid musk.

4. If they cry for you to help them out of a climbing rose they get stuck in, perhaps it's time to thin it out a bit. Cats love to climb and get to places you can't reach without a ladder, but again, don't expect much help from up there.

5. Having a patch of dry, loose soil in a corner of your garden is an attractive location for your cat to relieve itself, thus reducing the drudgery of cleaning out the litter box every day.

Bruce is watching over the garden in winter.

My life continues to be enriched in many ways by growing roses and by tending to a series of feline companions since 2002. I mourn their loss when it's time for them to pass under Eternity's rose arbor and have given their remains safe resting places well below the roots of a new rose bush. 

My Blue Girl Story

       Roses Are Tougher Than You Might Think

Blue Girl, aka Kölner Karneval, A Perfect Candidate for Rose Queen

My Blue Girl Story

Joe Truskot, Master Rosarian, Salinas, California, June 1, 2025

My first encounter with Blue Girl was during a photo shoot for a local news magazine. She stood out among a crowd all vying for the prized cover shot. She was tall. She was different. She seemed to dance in the gentle afternoon wind, and that captured my attention. Every click that camera made of her in the warm sun produced an eye-popping image. As I approached her, I was smitten. Her form was voluptuous, her color soft yet intense. She was fragile but had great substance. Her fragrance was intoxicating. I had to have her. Blue Girl needed to be mine.

Serendipitously, Blue Girl showed up on the Rose Society raffle table, and I won her. She lived in that same pot for the rest of that year as I prepared a weed-infested corner of my yard for her. The ridding of weeds from that plot took much longer than I thought … nearly three years. Blue Girl prospered the first two seasons in the pot, but when I tried to move her, I realized she was doing well because her roots had come through the drain hole and found some delicious soil. I moved the pot, cut off the exposed root, and her health took a plunge.

Finally, the ground was ready for a new resident. The hole was dug wide and deep with a couple of dried rack-of-lamb bones tossed into the bottom. As I lifted Blue Girl out of the pot, my hand slipped, and the entire rose fell four feet to the ground, breaking off half the bush. I did a nice clean prune and planted the remainder in the prepared soil. She made it through the rest of that season no worse for the trauma.

Spring came, and the weeds were back.  When I went to prune her a little bit, I realized that my mow-blow-and-go team had gotten there first and had weed-whacked the side of her strongest cane. Roses don’t heal from those wounds. So I cut the cane back to below the shreds of the scraped side – three inches protruding from the soil, now matching the stub I cut last fall when I dropped the plant.

I cleared more grass and weeds so the weed wacker would never get close again, watered, gave them some alfalfa, and let the sun shine on them. A week later, two canes had popped out, and a future for Blue Girl was assured.

My house is seventy years old, and although I’ve made many improvements over the years, the time was past due to fix the rotten and leaking window frames. The actual windows were replaced with Milgard ones twenty years ago, but what they were set into was now rotten and had to be replaced. After several interested contractors never returned with quotes, fortune finally showed in my favor. I engaged the best team of repairers I’ve ever experienced. These guys knew what to do and how to do it quickly and within just two days. I was so pleased to have this dangerous maintenance chore completed so beautifully.

When I went to admire one of the three fixed windows, I looked down and realized that was where Blue Girl was. Those two new canes coming from the stubs of what was once a beautiful rose bush looked dried out and forlorn. Like all rose enthusiasts, I knew it was a downside of growing roses. Sometimes the bushes you love just don’t make it. I began to think of other roses I might now put in that ideal spot. Many new varieties exist and are often better than those from the past. I was set on investigating something new.

After a couple of weeks and no sign of life up top from Blue Girl, I explored underground. It looked like something was happening beneath the soil line. Could that be a basal break? Sure enough, after being discarded, abandoned, broken, slashed, stepped on, and mourned over, Blue Girl was returning to life.

Blue Girl, hybrid tea, 1964

Here’s more information. Blue Girl was introduced in 1964 by the famous German hybridizing family, Kordes. Blue Girl is a deep lavender, hybrid tea rose released in the United States under that semi-prurient name in 1964, but introduced in Germany as Kölner Karnival (Cologne Carnival). Curiously, Carnival is a season celebrated in the City of Cologne and much of the Rhineland from November 11 up to Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, with a break for Advent, Christmas, New Year's Day, and the Epiphany. The largest celebration takes place on Rosenmontag or Rose Monday, the day before Mardi Gras. Giving Blue Girl the name Cologne Carnival in Germany by the top rose hybridizers in Germany indicates the Kordes family thought it a superior creation.

In the American Rose Society’s 2021 Handbook for Selecting Roses, Blue Girl is given the non-distinguished rating of 6.8. It appears to have been out of favor for a period and has regained some popularity. It isn’t listed in the 2014 Handbook at all.

The lesson of this story is that as long as you have a healthy root system and a quality graft sitting in a well-watered, well-drained soil, a rose bush has remarkable resilience.

As it turned out in that photo shoot, which occurred years ago now, my enthusiasm for Blue Girl’s photogenic qualities didn’t win over the editor, and some other picture ended up the cover girl.

Ellen Baker and Freddy Menge talk about Avocados

Avocado Growing on the Monterey Bay

Ellen Baker and Freddy Menge discussed growing avocados during their interview on "In The Garden," the weekly garden show on KSQD Santa Cruz hosted by Steven E. Popp and Joe Truskot, on Saturday, March 29, 2025, from 9 to 10 a.m. Epicenter Avocado