Battle of the Roses

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"

But would it still be as thorny? Logic tells me yes, but I wish there were a way to make the thorns magically disappear. We have two rosebushes out in front of my apartment that are our responsibility to keep up. Truthfully they don't take much work, they are apparently pretty hardy because they don't take any extra watering or anything, and our neglect of them hasn't hurt them yet. They do produce beautiful pink and yellow roses, and when I think to clip off the flowers in time really do quite well. However, I guess I'm not as tuned into taking care of our plants as I should be because they often get neglected for months. Well today I decided to tackle the overgrowth and prune them down since according to the internet this is the right time of year to prune roses in Arizona. Well, my little hand pruners were too short to allow me to really do a good pruning (at least without royally scratching up my arms), so I borrowed some long handled pruners and after an hour of trimming, piling and hauling rose branches to the garbage, I managed to escape with some halfway decent looking plants, now trimmed down to a decent size with plenty of space to grow and only a few hundred thorn pricks, not bad for my latest battle with the roses. As always, I vowed to keep a better eye on them, but whether or not that actually gets done remains to be seen.