Monday, June 2, 2014

Distant Drums Doubt

Friends, you would think that an old gardener could catch a break.  Out here on the Kansas Prairie, I garden in defiance of scorching sun, bitter blizzards, desiccating droughts, gale-force winds, rocky soil, and even the occasional prairie fire.  Is it too much to ask if the gardener's wife could cut him a little slack?

I took the picture above yesterday morning when the ground was still wet with dew and I sent it to Mrs. ProfessorRoush after telling her that I thought I'd captured a photo of a rose with exquisite coloring.  After receiving it on her iPhone, sitting in an adjacent room to where I was engaged on the computer, I heard her immediately exclaim "no way!".  And she then proceeded to accuse me of faking the coloration by photoshopping it.  And wanted to know where it was in the garden (even though she passes by it every day).

Mrs. ProfessorRoush is a wonderful wife and human being, but I was deeply hurt that she could suggest I would resort to falsifying a photo to deceive her.  I'm certainly not above cropping out a decaying bloom from the corner of a picture, nor occasionally playing with the brightness/darkness setting of a photo, but I would never, and probably could never, fake a picture like this one.  I don't even own Photoshop.  I do my cropping and compressing on the Microsoft Picture Manager  that comes with the computer.  If I had really faked this photo, I'd have certainly smudged out the insect bites on a couple of the petals.

The photo is, of course, of Griffith Buck's 'Distant Drums' rose, a rose that I've written about before and one that is admittedly not one of my favorites.   The blooms of this rose always have a unique coloration, but this trio went above and beyond their usual palette.  Since it just gave me a chance to astonish Mrs. ProfessorRoush, I may have to raise my personal ranking of 'Distant Drums'.  It's not often that I can gain a little respect at home, even if I have to loudly and fervently assert my innocence to get it.

I liked the photo so much, in fact, that I just made it my "masthead" for the blog.  What do you think of it?


8 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks. I have since found some online editors and removed the "blemishes"....so I can blow it up for the wall at home.

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  2. I like the coloration, and your photo is beautiful. I also have this rose; I don't recall seeing this same color, I will have to pay close attention when it blooms. All of my roses took a hit from the winter, all starting from ground up.

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    1. Not all the blooms are this colorful but they all vary from tan to mauve. I just happened to catch this trio in a happy intersection of the right light (morning) and phase of opening and just opened. As for the color, it is just as my camera took it.

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  3. Your photo actually looks like a painting, with a bit of a surreal thing going on! It is not a rose I am familiar with, but looks very interesting.

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    1. Jane, I'd love to know how she'd do in your climate! Her colors seem best where the sun isn't hot and scorching.

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  4. I love 'Distant Drums', and sadly, this winter did mine in. It was a grafted rose (which I hated to sink to, but it was what was available) and I buried the graft deep, but this winter was very hard on a lot of plants here. *sob*

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    Replies
    1. Yes, mine is grafted too, and a replacement for another grafted DD that I lost this winter, just like you. I only cried when I opened my wallet to buy another.

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