Avoiding cuts and scratches in garden and shop with Kevlar

[Clipper]

I have found since taking Eliquis that I bleed so easy that just a minor scrape on the back of a hand or on an arm and the thin blood runs right off the end of my fingers. As careful and aware as I am I still get bumps and scrapes and with my skin so thin I constantly have unsightly scabs or dark purple bruises on my hands and arms.

I was browsing around on Amazon the other day and came across Kevlar sleeves that protect a person's hands and arms from scrapes and cuts. They are like a woman's formal gloves and cover the arms to above the elbow and cover the back of my hands to the base of my fingers with a hole for my thumb.

I put a pair of leather work gloves on, and started pruning the rose bushes and the thorns could not penetrate the Kevlar. It is amazing how something woven and elastic can be so protective. We won't be testing it to see if it is bullet proof like the vests though. I have to wonder what spurred someone to develop them. Obviously someone in a trade or situation requiring the arms to be covered and protected. If anyone picks wild raspberries or black berries they would come in quite handy.

I was piling brush on the burn pile after the wind blew down some branches the other day during the last storm. I went to throw a limb up on the pile. A small branch caused a scratch about 5 inches long on the back of my right arm that bled bad enough to need covering with gauze and wrapping with the brown elastic tape that sticks to itself. It made bowling a bit awkward yesterday. I am always marked up with Bandaids and New Skin.

[BHU]

Sounds like a good idea. How do you prune your Roses? The ones here need to be pruned before winter.

[Clipper]

I have been reading about it and consulted with the nursery where we bought them. They said you can simply cut them back to 2 feet and prune out any dead canes. I didn't cut them back quite that radically. Some of them were about 4 feet tall with some odd shoots that shot up over 5 feet. I cut them back to about 3 feet in order to get them all back to a uniform height. I cleaned out some dead canes and dead headed the remaining blossoms.

I guess we will see how they fare come spring. I didn't have the vaguest idea how to prune them properly. In the past I have simply took the electric hedge clipper to them and then picked the cut pieces out of the bush. I have my fingers crossed that I didn't kill any of them, haha. I really don't want to dig up the bushes all across the front of the house and down one side.

I suggest that you do your own research on how to prune them and when to do it in your growing zone. I don't want to be responsible if something bad happens to YOUR bushes. It may be different in the colder climates where there is a lot of snow. I remember by grandfather wrapping his bushes in burlap and mulching the heck out of them in the fall.