Re: unfortunate rose pruning incident

tanyak@igc.org wrote:
> Last year my finger got swollen and quite painful after I'd been
> working on the roses, and I didn't know whether it was a thorn or a
> spider bite because I didn't notice anything at the time. Epsom-salt
> soaks sound like a good idea. I used various warm poultices, and it
> got better in a couple days.

Tanya
For over 30 years I pruned professionally (at the height of my career
would deal with more than 1,000 roses a year). I made a point of always
wearing stout gloves of real leather (no synthetic was ever as good at
protection) which saved me from a lot of woe, but still the odd one
seemed to get by. This very often happened when I was training climbers,
as I could never fasten the ties without removing my gloves.

I also did gardend maintenance work at other times of year, for which I
have never worn gloves,(loving the feel of the soil) and here if often picked up the odd thorn when weeding rose beds, not so often in my hands but rather in arms, legs and (when they could reach it) my head. Roses are like wild cats when it comes to people and scratch at every opportunity. Furthermore they are not the only thorny things one may sometimes encounter in a border. Ithink hollies and hollygrapes are even more vicious and their leaves have a nasty habit of staying unrotted on the soil for ages.

Over all these years I seldom had any trouble from these wounds unless a
thorn remined in the hole. If this happened without me noticing I often
found after a few days it would go mildly septic and then one could
squeeze the thorn out with a small globule of pus, after which quick
healing occurred. Very occasionally a more serious and persistant
infection would occur and I must admit that in those days (when we were
not so conscious of the danger of over-using antibiotics) I would
usually visit the Doctor for this and get Penecillin. However this
eventually backfired as I developed an adverse reaction to this useful
preparation and could no longer tolerate it. It seemed though by that
time I had built up sufficient immunity to minor garden wounds that I
have in recent years always (touch wood) healed up without any outside
help. Not that I don't still get the odd rose attacking me, but now only
in my own beds.

Apart from topical applications to wounds, which have always been much
more haphazard and less organized than yours, I am  a firm believer in
the value of keeping up my general health by correct diet and frequent
exercise, and so constantly reinforcing the working of my immume system
(which in consequence seems to be ample for dealing with such minor
infections).

I was amused to see Olwyn Williams in her posting mentioning the old and most useful glycerine and mag. sulph preparation one could once get from pharmacies. I fear the modern shops have got too grand and lazy to stock it (I bet they no longer know how to mix this type of homely remedy), but when my kids were small (all of 30 years ago now!) I always kept a jar on hand. I wonder if it was perhaps a NZ speciality or whether others elsewhere also encountered it).

Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ.     Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm

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