Time Away

Just a brief note to let regular readers know I'll be back to garden blogging soon.  I had to suffer through the last week in the subtropical paradise of St. Kitts and was unable to do any blogging or gardening there, so I had a rough week.  I know that the picture below is just rubbing it into my New England friends who are buried in the early snowstorm, but this is all behind me now and I'm back to the cold, windy plains of Kansas.

St. Kitts;  view from hotel.

October GGW Photo Contest

I've been making photographs for October's Gardening Gone Wild Photo Contest for weeks, trying to find just the right composition to fill what I felt was the nebulous theme of "fill the frame."  The contest rules, as I understand them, don't allow post-cropping of the photograph (the entire "canvas" must be used) so it creates a bit of a challenge to allow my camera lens to do the cropping.  I've taken wide lens garden vistas, and "whole plant" photographs and closeup after closeup, and before today, I believed the hardest part of the challenge was to make my own choice from among many possibilities.  Right up, that is, until I found this solitary, late bloom of the Griffith Buck rose 'Prairie Harvest', and then, even before the picture was taken, I knew I had my entry.  She was perfect, and delicate and a deeper yellow than the blooms of high summer, and even our recent first October freeze couldn't dim her glory.  So here she is, immortal hereafter, my "harvest" of the memories of past summer's sunshine:

Rosa 'Prairie Harvest', 10/22/11

(White) Blackberry Dreams

Long time readers of this blog will remember my ramblings last fall on the history of Burbank's White Blackberry, and also recall my quest to find a surviving specimen of this once world-famous wonder.

Well, I'm pleased to show you that, thanks to a generous benefactor, Burbank's White Blackberry now grows in my garden.  Last fall, I received 6 cane runners in the mail and needless to say, I treated them like gold.  Hedging my bets, I planted the two strongest canes outside in the main garden, put two weaker ones in another more protected spot, and tried growing the remaining two in a sunny window through the winter.  Only the two that were strongest survived, but those two are one more that I needed to get the strain going here.  I can taste those delicious berries already, even though the floracanes won't be mature till next year. 

They already look different than my other blackberries.  Pictured in September at the top right, and early this spring at the lower left, they are healthy, but still look different.   They are shorter than my non-thorny cultivars, a lighter green and a bit less glossy on the leaf surface.  But most of all, the canes, in cross section, are star-shaped rather than round.  Odd, but who knows what the actual breeding of this darling entailed?  Luther Burbank was always bit lax on public disclosure of his methods.

The kind gentleman who provided the rooted cuttings must remain anonymous because I don't want him deluged.  Deluged, that is, by the hundreds of requests that I anticipate will come from all over next summer when I show you my fabulous white berries.  But I will, here and ever after, acknowledge my debt to his generosity and say Thank You, in public.  They survived my meager care, buddy, and now grow again in the Flint Hills.

TGIA (Thank God It's Autumn)

'Touch of Class'

Until this weekend, I had nearly forgotten the blessings of Autumn here in my Flint Hills garden. There are fewer roses in the garden as the temperatures drop at night, to be sure, but the roses that make it to bloom ahead of the coming winter are often of perfect form and are much less likely than the roses of Spring to be damaged quickly by the prevailing prairie winds.  This 'Touch of Class' is as close as I ever see to a rose show quality bloom.

'Prairie Harvest'

The colors and hues of roses are spectacular and sometimes different in the Fall here!  I don't see the pink blush on the petals of this 'Prairie Harvest' from buds that pre-bake in the summer heat, and I believe the demure tint added to the normal light yellow increases the allure of this rose.

'Lavande'

The lavenders can often be deeper and bolder toned at this time in the fall.  This is 'Lavande', a floribunda that I purchased cheap from a local and now out-of-business discount box store many years ago.  I suspected at the time that I was just buying a mislabeled 'Angel Face', but there really is a 'Lavande', a florists rose, bred in Canada by Bruce Rennie.

'Granada'

'Granada' shows off its bi-color blooms and its scent here when the summer sun doesn't roast it into submission within hours.  This rose is one of Mrs. ProfessorRoush's favorites.  I can take it or leave it, personally.

Have you noticed that "orange roses" actually really look a little orange as Halloween closes in?  This miniature rose, whose name I've long forgotten, always picks October to remind me that it still deserves a place in my garden.

Viva La Autumn!