It is quite permissible to dip the blades of secateurs into warm water, and scrub them clean with an old toothbrush. Afterwards the best thing to wipe them with is a light 3 in 1 oil, so that they are fully protected. Do this every time you use metal tools. It pays off in the long run. After the last few weeks of heavy rains you ought to get out and about to make sure that your pot plants have sufficient compost in them. Make sure that extra long shoots formed during the rains are not too long. If you think that they are, it is permissible to cut them back to balance things out. Be careful though that you are not cutting out flowering wood. One plant which sometimes starts to take over is bamboo. Gardeners who know that they have an invader will make sure that it is restricted in the way it can grow, and will plant it in a metal container which they will then sink into the ground. Alternatively, they will plant in a bed surrounded by concrete sides to prevent its escape into the garden proper.
I don’t know whether you realise this, but our own bird vine is related to the European mistletoe. Both are parasitic, pagan. And the latter most certainly sees a lot of kissing during the Christmas season. I have cut bird vine off my trees, and hung it about the house in strategic positions but alas I never get any takers. The Victorians started the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe (as if they didn’t start off enough ). In an earlier Britain mistletoe (though not bird vine) was associated with fertility rites. Not a group of people slow in the uptake, the pharmacists have started introducing shampoos with mistletoe extract, and there are murmurings about its possible use in medicines for epilepsy and lowering the heart rate.
In view of its association with fertility rites we might be staring at a gold mine. After all, people are already making money out of perfectly useless plants purporting to be efficacious for almost everything you could think of. As bird vine and mistletoe are so closely allied, I wonder whether we have a little cottage industry looking down at us from our most prized trees.
A word of caution to rose growers. Pick up and burn all fallen leaves, and remove and burn leaves showing signs of black spots and mildew.
Whatever you do don’t put them on the compost heap.
Enjoy your plants and garden and may your God go with you wherever you are in Guyana.
