Pegging - A very effective way to increase flower production on Bonbon & Hybrid Perpetual roses that send up long shoots with oily flowers on the end. It is a time consuming method but well worth the display. This is generally done in the fall. Instead of pruning, spread the runners and fasten to the soil with wire loops. Basically you are training the plant horizontally.
There are certain kinds of trees which never bear any fruit as long as their branches stay up straight, but if stones are hung on the branches to bend them down they begin to bear fruit. So it is with the soul. When it is humbled it begins to bear fruit, and the more fruit it bears the lowlier it becomes. So also the saints; the nearer they get to God, the more they see themselves as sinners…. Abraham, when he saw God, called himself “dust and ashes.” And Isaiah said, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips.” Similarly Daniel was in the lion’s den and Habakkuk came to him with a meal and said to him, “Accept the food, which the Lord has sent you.” And Daniel replied, “For the Lord has remembered me!” He had great humility in his heart when he was in the lion’s den because they did not devour him once and for all, not even afterwards, and so with astonishment he cried, “the Lord has remembered me”.
Do you see the humility of the saints and how their hearts were set on it? Even when messengers straight from God were sent to them to help them they were not turned away from humility but fled from self-glorification. As men clad all clad in silk flee if a filthy rag is thrown at them, so that their noble robes will not be stained, so the saints, clad in virtue, take flight from human glory lest they be stained by it. Those who desire that sort of glory are like the naked man who always wishes to find a few rags, anything at all, to cover his shame. So too one who is naked of virtue desires to be praised by men. Therefore the holy men who are sent from God to help men, do not let go of humility. Hence on one occasion Moses said, “I beseech thee, Lord, send another more eloquent than me for I am hard-voiced and a stammerer.” Jeremiah said on another occasion, “I am a child!” So every single one of the saints, as I have said, acquired this humility from the fulfillment of the Commandments. No one can explain how this comes about, how humility is generated in the soul. Unless a man learns this by experience, he cannot learn it by verbal teaching.
… It is more than clear that the humble man, the god-fearing man, knows perfectly well that nothing good, nothing straight and sure, happens in the soul without the help and the supervision of God, and therefore he does not stop praying unceasingly that God may act mercifully towards him. A man standing in need of everything from God is ready to make progress; he knows how he will make progress, and cannot be puffed up. He does not rely on his own abilities but attributes to God everything he does right and always give thanks to Him….. the more humble he is, the more help he gets from God, and so he advances in the spiritual life through this virtue of humility.
Hat tip to Christ in Our Midst
