There's a Fungus Among Us

OK so I discovered my nearly wild rose already has 2 leaves affected by black spot, a dangerous fungal infection common in roses. Here I thought they were super disease resistant and everything! It may well have come that way from the nursery; I think I spaced them alright in the garden to allow for maximum air flow, but then again the NW rose is right in the middle of the other two. (Although, to be fair, its whole back is open to the air!) It seems to only be affecting 2 or 3 leaves so far. My plan is to remove the infected leaves and a bit of the cane tomorrow, and then treat all the roses with a systemic anti-fungal. In this case I think it would be easier to spray, but I haven't been able to find any fungicide spray for roses. Go figure. Anyway one more thing to accomplish tomorrow! My list keeps growing.

Speaking of, I forgot to mention on here, I have been doing some weed research. If you've been to our house you may have noticed we have a bunch of AWFUL thistles (Amy calls them "sticker bushes") in the yard. Very big and horribly painfully thorny. They grow like, well, like weeds. ANYWAY I figured out those are a variety called Canadian thistle, and the reason my pulling and digging them hasn't done any damn good is that they grow on an underground rhizome system. The whole front yard? Probably one single plant. Plus they seed too so every frond that sticks up puts of thousands of airborne seeds, and if just one seed takes it can create another plant that covers the entire yard.... the only way to kill them is with Roundup. Lots of Roundup. Kill the majority of the above ground weeds. And to keep the Roundup off the grass and daffodils and snowberries and everything else, I need to go around to each plant (and I'm not kidding, we have hundreds. Several hundreds) and paint each leaf with Roundup using a paintbrush.

This is going to be a very time consuming job. I see a babysitter in my children's future.