Showing posts with label Comte de Chambord. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comte de Chambord. Show all posts

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Last Blooms

'Morden Sunrise'
Puttering around yesterday, enjoying working outside on a perfect sunny fall day in a short-sleeve shirt, it suddenly dawned on ProfessorRoush that he was in the company of the last blooms of 2019, considering the cold front coming and 24ºF lows predicted in two days.  He felt it best to spare a few moments from cleaning the garage and covering the strawberries so that he could share these last few blossoms with you.  And fortunate it was, since the first bloom he could find was beautiful 'Morden Sunrise', awash in the golds and pinks of her fall colors.


More overtly bright and cheerful, this last Hollyhock greeted me as I turned the corner of the house.  Normally, this hollyhock is a bright pink, but fall seems to bring out her red tones, back-lit by the sun as she was.  I don't know what a Hollyhock was doing blooming this late in fall, but I was happy to see her waiting for my adoration.  She is completely filled out, too, not as beaten down by fickle weather as many other blooms.



'Comte de Chambord'
I was overjoyed to see this 'Comte de Chambord', a dependable repeating Portland that hasn't yet succumbed to Rose Rosette disease, but I was less happy, looking up how to spell her name, that all the internet sources show her as bright pink.  I've had her in the garden over 15 years, even blogged about her, and she does occasionally blush pink, but she never turns anywhere near the pink of her internet portraits.  Now, as I see her bleached completely white in the fall, have I been growing a mis-named rose all this time?  Rats. 





'Applejack'
Perhaps the biggest surprise in the garden was to find 'AppleJack' with a single, scented bloom holding on for dear life.  This early Griffith Buck rose usually blooms only for 6 weeks or so during the main season, with seldom rebloom, but the wet year must have it working overtime to compete with the hollyhocks.  Regardless, both this beetle and I are happy to see it.





'David' phlox, or whatever my spreading white phlox is now, still blooms in several places but best here in a very protected spot between other shrubs.  Clean, pure, and white, it still is attracting pollinators even as it stares the coming winter right in the face.  Since snow is predicted tomorrow, I'll have to remember to revisit it to see if it blooms for a few moments in the snow as well.




'David Thompson'
It is my undesired, and unappreciated 'David Thompson' who is bringing home the prize.  As I've written previously, I've never really liked this rose, nor the prominent place I've given it, but I have to admit to its tenacity in the face of disapproval.  This Explorer series rose survives, and almost thrives, among neglect and disdain in my back border.  I've learned to keep if from suckering out of control by withholding fertilizer and water and love.   Today, however, those blooms are perfect and deeply colored, laughing at my lack of care and showing me who really deserves to be a part of this garden.

'George Vancouver'
Not last, but last pictured, Canadian rose 'George Vancouver' is attempting to keep a little bright red color alive to compete with the browning grasses and leaves.  I haven't grown 'George Vancouver' long or mentioned him on this blog, and he is still a small shrub, but he is going into its second winter for me and continues to show promise here on the prairie. 

Last, and not pictured, are a bunch of also-rans and almosts.  English rose 'Heritage' has a few bedraggled blossoms to sniff as you pass, and I've seen a really beaten lilac bloom here or there over the past couple of weeks.  I had some really nice reblooming irises show up last week, but I cut them all for the house before a recent frost could take them.   And the grasses, prairie and ornamental, blooming grasses everywhere I look.  I don't think grass blooms count, however, and those are a subject for another day.

 

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Comte de Chambord

How the heck have I missed making 'Comte de Chambord' a focus of discussion in this blog???   Somewhere, somehow, I've overlooked one of the most dependable roses of my back landscaping border, a pleasure to have and to hold and to smell.  She is one of my favorite roses, prominently displayed out in front of my Kon Tiki statue since 2003, alongside her garden-mate, 'La Reine', whose violet tones she reflects in her blush pink petals as an expression of love.  

'Comte de Chambord' is a pink-blend Portland rose, one of the few of this class that I've been able to find and grow.  She was bred by Robert and Moreau in or around 1858,  a cross of 'Baronne Prevost' and 'Portland Rose'.   'Comte de Chambord' has relatively small blooms in my garden, about 3-4 inches in diameter. but they are very full of petals (50+ petals), and of fragrance, with a sweet, strong aroma.   She's at her most beautiful in Spring and Fall in cooler weather, when the color is medium pink with a trace of blue, but in the midst of Summer she pales to almost white and she wrinkles terribly with the sun.   In fact, I've questioned that I have the right rose for the name because of the small size of the blooms and the paleness in my garden compared to some descriptions of the rose, but I received my specimen from a trustworthy mail-order source.  Once in a while, she'll even show her Damask background and have a bit of a green pip visible at her center.  Sources on the Internet list her as tall, like my specimen, but Peter Beals, in Classic Roses, has her as only 3' X 2' and also lists her introduction later, in 1863.

'Comte de Chambord' is a real garden shrub, with a vase-like shape staying at about 4-5 feet tall in my garden.  I trim about 6 inches off her top every Spring, but that's about all the care she requires; no spraying or fussing with this rose. She is cane-cold hardy in my garden, never exhibiting any winter dieback.  I see about five or six bloom cycles before Winter shuts her off every year.  All in all, a trouble-free and gorgeous rose.

'Comte de Chambord' is the mother of 'Gertrude Jekyll', the first of the English roses, but none other than Paul Barden says he prefers the mother to the offspring, and I agree.  'Comte de Chambord' is a fine rose for the garden, and I recommend adding her to yours as one of the best ambassadors of the Portland class.   And by the way, I'm amiss in calling 'Comte' a she.  No less tha Jeri Jennings noted in a Gardenweb post that 'Le Comte' would be a gentleman, while a female would be 'Le Comtesse'.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Kon-Tiki Seasons

When I considered the suggestion by horticulturist Kelly D. Norris to take pictures repeatedly of the same view in the garden (see my blog titled "Sometimes a Diversion"), I realized that I had presciently taken that advice, but only in regards to one or two specific places in my garden.  And "The Head" was one of those places that I haven't yet written about.

The Head, an Easter-Island-type statue I obtained from a local garden store, has been in my garden since the beginning.  It was the first statue of any size that I placed in the garden.  I keep the somber Head on a pedestal in the middle of two yellow 'Rugelda' rugosa hybrid roses, backed up by the white 'Marie Bugnet', and facing, of course, due east on the compass.   There it waits daily for the sunrise and stands watch for me to spread the alarm in case of the return of the Gods.

I'd always thought The Head provided a handsome conversation piece, flanked by the glory of the 'Rugelda' roses, but since I purchased it, it was always a point of ridicule for me from my loving wife, who despises it.  The last laugh was mine, though since the identical piece of concrete appears frequently on HGTV in the garden of Paul James, the Gardener Guy, forever muting my better half's questioning of my gardening tastes.  Anyway, when the 'Rugelda' fades, pink 'La Reine Victoria'  and blush white 'Comte de Chambord' are there to pick up the slack.

The Head is a good soldier, standing firm in the face of thunderstorms, prairie fires, and the ever-present Kansas wind (at least after I finally created a stable concrete foundation for it to keep it from slowly listing and falling off the pedastel).  It takes the harsh eastern sunrise on its face and the full burning Flint Hills non sun on its hatless skull without complaint.  And even when the ice comes down and glazes its features, it stands silent, immune to the world.

 



But I have seen The Head, in the depths of winter, weeping with me at the cold damage to the naked rose canes surrounding it and its poor perennial friends shivering in the show. The Head is always a good garden companion for the plants and for me alike. It doesn't talk to me though, really it doesn't.  At least not that I'm telling.  And I'll let you know if it informs me that the Gods have returned from space.

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