Magic Morning Musings

He almost didn't do it.   Yesterday was ProfessorRoush's 66th birthday, and it was packed so busy that, at first, he nearly didn't notice the world outside.   It was Commencement day at the College, and I had time for only a full day of work, graduation ceremony, receptions, and plans.  I woke early, too early, checked in online for the news and was heading for the shower when I realized that it was light outside and the sky through the skylights was PINK.  Already starting later than I planned, I hesitated and debated and shut down the Critic and the urgencies of the day and listened, for once, to the voices that I so often ignore.  

The voices I heeded were the Writer & the Photographer & the Philosopher, all in agreement and demanding that the call to go outside could not be ignored.  The Writer anticipates and collects and records special moments in the garden.  The Photographer understands the magic of diffused morning light and demands its capture. And the Philosopher always advocates for the feel of a fresh breeze on still-sleepy skin, and clean air filling the lungs and the waking sounds of life across the crisp, cool prairie.

Oh, what awaited!  As the sun barely broke the horizon, my senses were bombarded with life and all the promise of a new day.  The pink and oranges were quickly receding from the sky as the sun rose and I took these pictures all within a few brief minutes, catching the roses opening to the kiss of sunlight, before the low clouds could steal the magic and drain away the last of the colors.  

The act of garden photography, of itself, is an invitation to morning meditation and especially helpful to hyperactive and time-driven unfortunates like myself.  Hold perfectly still.  Calm your breathing and heartbeat. Frame the subject. Check the edges.  Focus.  Check the background.  Adjust depth of field. Look for distractions in the viewer.  Make sure vertical and horizontal lines in the photo are squared up.  Take the photo.   Assess and start again, breaths slowing, heartbeat dropping, soul quiet.  And the result?  Not a single photo here is cropped or enhanced or edited in any way, their natural beauty on full display.  There are rewards for a detail-oriented psyche.

I hesitated again, feeling the pull of the Critic, knowing I should be moving on, but I listened instead to the Artist insisting that I take just a few more seconds to capture the sunlight on the colorful irises. Had I not, I would never have experienced the moment and joy captured by this photograph and never felt the impertinence of the brave, brooding, deep purple bloom on the left or the cheerfulness of the yellow irises in the center.

Listen to the Voices my friends, not the voices of Schedule or Despair, not the misdirected urgings of Greed or Vice, but the wisdom of the Child, the passion of the Lover, and the vision of the Faithful.  Life gives us few enough gifts and we must cherish and recognize and grasp those we are given with our hands and hearts and minds and hold on to them in memory and gratitude.   

And I'm forever grateful for these captured moments, on this, my 66th birthday.

Just Bloomin'

ProfessorRoush has nothing clever to say tonight; no biting wit, no humor, not even a long love poem to a favorite rose.  I took advantage of a few hours without rain this afternoon and I'm just in from weeding the back patio garden bed and I thought you'd like to see what's blooming in my garden, because essentially everything is blooming in my garden.  This vista, in particular, caught my eye as I walked through picking up trimmings:   Bright red 'Survivor' and magenta 'Hanza' are blooming in the foreground, and in the background, from left to right, 'Pink Grootendorst', 'Madame Hardy', 'Polareis' and 'Purple Pavement' are the prominent roses.

This particular 'Polareis', a sucker of my first, is in it's third or fourth year after transplanting and she's finally reached a height and width to stand out in the garden, particularly when she's blooming like there will be no tomorrow.  You've probably already noticed that I haven't trimmed out the winter dead twigs from among the roses yet in these beds, but 'Polareis' didn't die back at all despite the previous especially-brutal winter.  

She's also blushing a lot this year.  Normally a pure white in the heat of summer, her first blooms in the spring (and all of them this year) often retain a little pink blush from the cooler, wetter weather.  In that regard, 'Polareis' is a little bit of a changeling, affected by temperature and the Kansas sun, but beautiful in both versions. 

My original 'Polareis', shown here in front of pink and taller 'Lillian Gibson', is a little more beat up this year, but she's trying to maintain her 5 foot mature height.  Dwarfed and outclassed a little by the hardier and healthier 'Lillian Gibson', I still think she'll come back with a vengeance with a little loving care this summer.   She's been blooming just a few more days than her younger offspring, and you can see the fallen petals littering the ground at her feet.

Coming in from the east area of the garden, I'm well pleased by bright pink 'Foxi Pavement' and gray-white 'Snow Pavement', both just beginning to bloom here in the foreground, although I haven't got around to pruning the winter-damaged cane of 'Applejack' that spoils the picture hanging out over 'Snow Pavement'.  'Foxi Pavement'  and 'Snow Pavement' are both unkept and loosely petaled, but they both attract bees like...well,  like flies to honey.

Just behind them as I walk further towards the gazebo, the same roses from the opposite view of the first photo above, 'Survivor' and 'Hanza' fill the middle depth, with light pink  'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' just peeking in on the right.   My gazebo, in the far background, lends a little structure to the photo and view.  It's a little weather worn, but has stood through the worst of our storms, although I made a mental note today to replace the weakened wooden swing inside before it collapses under an unsuspecting Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  

I've seldom seen 'Pink Grootendorst' look better than she does this year.   She's a gangly, rough, farm-raised kind of gal, rarely dressed up for the ball, but she's a pretty lass even so.  I wouldn't ever bring her into the house in a vase, but in my garden, as a solid survivor of Rose Rosette disease,  'Pink Grootendorst' has earned her place. 

Last today within this photo-heavy blog entry, I'll leave you with a perfect bloom of 'Bric A Brac', one of the stripped peony creations of the Klehm's and Song Sparrow Farm.  I know, I know, this bloom looks far from perfect, ragged and misshapen as it is, but that's actually what 'Bric A Brac' is supposed to look like, a picture to do her creator proud.   An offering to my ongoing striped flower fetish, 'Bric A Brac' is a little stronger than her sister, 'Pink Spritzer', and she's always a welcome visitor here.

Perfect White Roses

'Madame Hardy'

Finally, finally, finally.  At last, in this garden year of dry winters and late freezes and cool dampness, when so many spring flowers have failed to appear or, worse, were prematurely ended in full flower, something beautiful appears.  I thought it would be the peonies, full of buds and promise, to lift me at last but three days of rain have lowered their foliage, lowered my expectations, and left sodden mopheads of their blooms.

'Blanc Double de Coubert'

No, it's my roses, timidly opening one by one, who are exceeding expectations this spring.  Ravaged by rose rosette disease, unpruned and sawfly-stricken, they are nonetheless defiant to the elements and demanding of my worship. 

'Madame Plantier'

We are going to play a game my friends, you and I, a little voting game where you pick the most beautiful of the white roses blooming this evening in my garden.  I took all these photos as dusk fell, beneath brooding skies on the third day of intermittent rain that has totaled now over 5 inches.  White roses, white Old Garden and shrub roses, normally don't respond well to long periods of moisture, browning on the edges of their petals and balling up into mildew.  This year, however, their raiment is unblemished, their virginal purity perfect and perduring.

'Sir Thomas Lipton'

So which is it, your favorite of these unsoiled white maidens?  'Madame Hardy', divinely arrayed around her center pip and lemon-scented, just the slightest blush to her cheeks?  'Blanc Double de Coubert', proclaimed by Gertrude Jekyll, according to Michael Pollan, "the whitest rose known," but also a thorny and untidy jewel?  'Madame Plantier', button-eyed mimic of 'Mme. Hardy', a slightly less fragrant rose on a better-foliaged bush?  Does rugose 'Marie Bugnet' capture your soul, her ample double blooms drawing you across the garden with virtuous allure?  Or might one prefer the gentleman of the group, scandalous Sir Thomas Lipton, lanky and tall, adorned in alabaster?

'Marie Bugnet'

For me, today, the wiles of  'Marie Bugnet', a tough and suffering dame in my garden, have most captured my attentions.  What does the legendary Gertrude Jekyll know of my Marie anyway?  Jekyll was nearly blind in her gardening prime and herself planted 30 years before 'Marie Bugnet' was introduced.  'Blanc Double de Coubert' normally crumples into brown paper with extended moisture and has fewer and flatter petals.  'Madame Hardy', normally my favorite, is a close second tonight as the slight pink tone she carries when damp is unbecoming of a true lady.  'Madame Plantier', however gussied up, is still but a cheaper pretender to the throne of purity.  And 'Sir Thomas Lipton' may be a fitting companion to the likes of 'Madame Plantier', but he remains a rough scalawag, unrefined and rowdy in the garden.

It's 'Marie Bugnet', on this gloomy evening, that brightens the darkness, fans my fires and summons my smile.  I'm captured by her beauty, and enthralled by her immaculate peignoir.  Don't you agree?  Pray with me now, please, for her safety, for her glory, to shine forever in my garden.

Secondhand Roses

While I'm off on a garden book tangent, I am pleased to show you one of the many reasons why I browse secondhand book stores and visit every Half-Price Books store that crosses my path.  Last week, I ran across what I think is a first edition of Roses by Jack Harkness, published in 1978 by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Roses is a catalog of sorts, printed in the style of its era.  None of the flashy full-color-photographs-on-every-page of modern book layouts, this one has two inserts of color plates, 16 pictures in each insert chosen from the hundreds that Harkness described.  I bought it, not for the photos, but for this famous rose breeder's prose regarding the hundreds of roses. Summarizing this excellent work, Harkness wrote, "I could truly claim that this story has no end, an obscure beginning, and a heroine who is forever changing."

Each individual rose description is marvelous for their collective gold mine of personal insights.  Take, for example, what he writes about my personal favorite, 'Madame Hardy';  "...one of the most wonderful roses, provided its lax, ungainly growth may be forgiven...a further pardon is required in case the weather sweeps away its intricate flowers.  I do so pardon it....a bloom like that is remembered all your life."


He was not as complimentary of 'Mme Isaac Pereire' and her sport 'Mme Ernst Calvat':  "These two are generally applauded...as examples of the beauty of old garden roses.  I cannot see why....if 'Mme Pierre Oger' is Cinderella, these two are the Ugly Sisters fortissimo....long branches are clad with dull foliage, nasty little thorns and mildew...flowers, revolting in color, frequently ameliorate that sin by failing to open at all"  Grudgingly, he finishes his description of these widely-acclaimed intensely fragrant Bourbons with "...to give the devils their dues, they are both fragrant."  

I certainly agreed wholeheartedly with the opening of his description of 'Blanc Double de Coubert': "This rose has been praised too much...the petals are thin, easily spoiled by rain....If one wants a double white rose, I see no point in planting this one."  And his paragraph about 'Charles de Mills':  "I have had little joy from this variety, which the experts describe as tall....(it) does not grow tall when I plant it and I do not admire its short buds...(but)it improves on opening."

 I especially admired and noted the book's dedication "To Betty Catherine Harkness.  I met her in 1946, had the extraordinary sagacity to marry her in 1947; and we have lived happily ever after, thanks mainly to her."  Should I ever write another book, I must remember to follow his lead and provide some recognition for the long-suffering Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  I believe she also exhibited "extraordinary sagacity" to accept my proposal of marriage, even though she might submit some trivial examples to suggest otherwise during our 32 years together.

Rainy Day Scanning

During the periodic brief rains yesterday (which didn't amount to anything except running me out of the garden), I collected a few flowers to play with a scanner photograph or two.  I had forgotten over the past couple of years, during times of peak bloom, to try this method, and I had forgotten the lovely effects one can create.   This scan of 'Madame Hardy', taken against the backdrop of one of Mrs. ProfessorRoush's blouses (sssshhh, don't tell her!), is a simple and lovely composition, despite my lack of proper photo editing skills and the rudimentary software I have for doing it.  If you've ever wondered, most of the photographs on this blog are not edited beyond cropping and compressing to be posted.



I was just playing yesterday, and in a bit of a hurry, as you can see from the photo at the left.  Haste makes waste on these scanner photographs and you've got to have everything arranged just so.  Folded petals don't help the image, nor do insects or wet flowers or pollen falling from the stamens.  Still, in this picture, you should be able to find 'Honorine de Brabant', 'Alchymist', 'Variegata di Bologna', 'Allegra', 'Gallicandy', 'Survivor', 'Mountain Music', 'Duchesse de Montibello', 'Alfred de Dalmas', 'Prairie Clogger', and a couple of unknown reds.  I tried to choose the best flowers, but even the flowers I thought were perfect, like the 'Madame Hardy' above, have some rain-browned edges on closeup.  Rats.




Of course, to get rid of the imperfections, one can always move to the more abstract, as in this paint.net modification (using the "dents" setting) of another 'Madame Hardy' scan set against a black background.  This one would make a fine stained-glass window, don't you agree?

Or, one could go with an ethereal look.  This almost all white image of 'Madame Hardy' would have been better if I could have figured out a way to get the white background while also pressing down on the flowers to improve focus. Maybe next time.  Oh, and happy Memorial Day, everyone!

Sprawling Fantin-Latour

The selection of roses for planting is such a fickle action at times.  I sometimes seek out specific roses based on their reputations, while at other times I'm struck by a photograph in a catalogue, or an intriguing hint dropped in another blog.   As a result, there are roses in my garden that I take almost for granted.  Hardly noticed for their temporary beauty, they fill in spaces and trundle on year after year, never causing trouble sufficient to sentence them to elimination by spade, nor causing enough excitement to move them to a more prominent position.

Such a rose, in my garden, is the Centifolia 'Fantin-Latour'.   I obtained her ten or eleven years ago, I believe, from Suzy Verrier's former Royall River Rose Nursery, and she has long been one of the non-remonant roses that border my back patio.  Of unknown provenance, discovered before 1938, she is undeniably beautiful in bloom, a light blush pink with sometimes a green center, and her fragrance is sweet and very strong.  When she is without bloom, however, she's a stiff, rangy shrub that wants to sprawl 4 feet in all directions and stands about 4 feet tall as well.  I would give her better marks for appearance if she was the sole rose at the party, but placed in my garden next to my favorite 'Madame Hardy', she always comes off as a poor second choice for a dance partner.  'Fantin-Latour is less-refined and more loosely arranged in blossom than 'Madame Hardy', she hasn't nearly as tight or shapely legs, and she's much more awkward in appearance.   Her stiff canes are gawky and never clothed with short stems or flowers, completely naked, in essence, from the waist down.  In a Romance novel, 'Madame Hardy' would be the prim and proper Lady of the manor, 'Fantin-Latour' the blushing but willing peasant milkmaid who pleasures the Lord on his daily travels.

I don't intend, by that comparison, any ill will towards peasant milkmaids, many of whom star in my nightly dreams just as 'Fantin-Latour' graces my garden.  'Fantin-Latour' is of hardy stock, whoever her parents were, and she has no winter dieback here in Kansas.  She gets a little minimal fungus occasionally, so I watch her for blackspot a bit when the weather is most humid in order to keep as many leaves covering her angular frame as possible.  The blossoms, cupped and very double, are a little disheveled at times, and they also get a smidgen of botrytis blight in cool wet weather, but in warm dry sun they are the equal of any beautiful rose in my garden.  The biggest positive of 'Fantin-Latour', in my mind, has been the absolute lack of care she needs.  The picture above is from 2008, blooming her head off in late Spring, and the picture at the bottom is from this past summer, halfway through a drought.  Her appearance is almost identical and I haven't taken a pruner to her at all during those years, except to remove a dead cane or two.  No gardener could ask for an easier rose to care for, nor a more beautiful one.  I, for one, will always be able to overlook her wanton desire to sprawl across my garden beds just as long as she is willing to provide an annual burst of fragrant blooms.

One Last Sunrise, One Last Rose

If the Doomsday Prepper interpretations of the Mayan Long Count Calendar are right, this blog will be the last I post, the last electronic series of 0's and 1's that reach the ether from my winter-dessicated corpus. 

To the multi-dimensional creatures, or clattering insects or slimy green aliens who are reading this, I tried, I really tried, to grow a decent garden here in the mid-Continental region currently known as Kansas.  I primarily grew roses because of my love for them and because roses have a natural affinity for this gardener-grinding area.  If this struggling prairie has returned to its former state as the bottom of an inland sea, or if it is now a part of a towering mountaintop, it could scarcely be harder now to grow a healthy plant than it was in my time, so I wish you the best of luck.  If, on the other hand, the Earth's poles shift just enough so that Kansas is where Texas used to be, and this area is now a more temperate, rain-glutted paradise, then a pox on you and your beautiful Tea and Noisette roses.

Myself, I'm not too concerned about tomorrow's sunrise.  I'm a results-oriented guy and the Mayan's didn't predict their own demise in the middle of a piktun, so I grade their track record as pretty dismal.  Anything short of the Yellowstone Caldera blowing up tomorrow is survivable.  A nice solar storm that puts us back to the Dark Ages would be good for the planet, if perhaps not for mankind.  On a more minor scale, if the magnetic poles reverse, but nothing else happens, then I may live the rest of my life directionally disoriented, but the crops will still grow and at age 53, I'm a simple guy.  Leave me food, fun, and females and I can pretty well muddle through the remainder of my days. 

If I'm wrong, however, and the sun doesn't rise tomorrow for me, or for anyone else, I leave you with this rose, 'Madame Hardy', the greatest creation of Gardening Man, in my humble soon-former opinion.  If 'Madame Hardy' is the sole measure of mankind's existence, then I depart satisfied and reverential before her unmatched beauty. 
  

Blackspot Susceptibility; Old Garden Roses

'Madame Hardy'

At last comes the third blog in my series reviews of roses for blackspot susceptibility.  Two Mondays ago I reported my Griffith Buck roses and last Monday it was the Canadians and Rugosas.   Since I also grow a fair group of Old Garden Roses (compared to some mythical average rosarian in my mind), I'll throw down on them in this third blog of the trio.  As before, the first number is the estimated percentage of leaves with blackspot and the second number the estimated percent defoliation.

Old Garden Roses:
Fantin Latour 60%-20%
Madame Hardy 0%-0%
Double Scotch White 0%-0%
Konigin Von Danemark 0%-0%
Comte de Chambord 0%-0%
La Reine Victoria 0%-0%
Zephirine Drouhin 5%-0%
Celsiana 0%-0%
Duchesse de Montebello 0%-0%
Charles de Mills 10%-15%
Louise Odier 5%-50%
Ballerina 30%-30%
Rose de Rescht 70%-5%
Variegata di Bologna 80%-10%
Red Moss (Henri Martin) 0%-20%
Salat 0%-5%
Duchesse de Rohan 0%-5%
Reine des Violettes 10%-10%
Madame Issac Pierre 10%-0%
Cardinal de Richelieu 0%-0%
Belle de Crecy <5%-5%
Blush Hip <5%-0%
Coquette de Blanches 5%-0%
Duchess of Portland 5%-0%
Frau Karl Druschki 10%-10%
Ferdinand Pichard <5%-0%
Shailor's Provence 0%-0%
Madame Plantier 0%-0%
Maiden's Blush 0%-0%
Seven Sisters 0%-0%
La France 20%-80% (not really an OGR, but the first Hybrid Tea).

This is normally a fairly blackspot-free group, but Fantin Latour got spotted up early and pretty badly, and Variegata di Bologna presently has a touch of the fungal flu.  As you would expect however, it is hard to go wrong with Old Garden Roses.  Most of our current disease troubles began after the breeding of 'La France'.  I grow 'La France' for conversations-sake only; if there was ever a balled-up, blackspot ridden rose, it is that first miserable offspring of crossing a Hybrid Perpetual with a Tea rose.  Why, oh why, did society ever decide that 'La France' was the future of roses?  For sheer gloriousness, I think the world went wrong and should have stayed with 'Madame Hardy', 'Duchesse de Montebello', and 'Madame Plantier'. Those are three classy old dames who can still show a gardener a good time.

Carefree Bloomer

'Carefree Spirit'

I promised this post to some visitors to my garden (well, actually they were captive relatives quickly lured into a stupor by my incessant babbling about the garden).  During a garden walk, they had described a spectacular rose bush growing in their neighborhood.  As we walked further along the garden, seeing all the roses who still retained a bloom or two, they added that it was a "simpler" rose with few petals, and that it was red, and maybe had a white center.  I took them, in time, to my 'Carefree Spirit' rose and they proclaimed it as the rose they had seen, although mine was much smaller at two years of age then the bush they remembered.







'Carefree Spirit' (MEIzmea) does indeed put on a spectacular bloom display, and she will continue to bloom freely throughout the summer.  Introduced by Conard-Pyle in 2009, her actual origin is a little confusing as she is listed as being bred by both Alain Meilland or Jacques Mouchotte (a breeder in the House of Meilland) in 2007.  Do I sense some Gallic discord in the House of Meilland?  She is also listed in helpmefind as the result of a cross between a 'Red Max Graf' seedling and a seedling of 'Pink Meidiland' X 'Immensee', and in other places as a descendant of 'Carefree Delight', a previous AARS winner.  If she really has 'Max Graf' and a R. kordesii seedling in her background, even my limited knowledge of rose hybridizing would leave me to suspect that the bush is very vigorous and winter hardy, and indeed she is completely winter hardy in my climate.  This is indeed a tough bush, surviving and doubling in size during a summer and winter of drought, and the glossy dark green foliage requires no spray against fungus or beast.  So far, even the deer have left it alone. In 2004, the All American Rose Selections group stopped spraying fungicides at its test gardens, and Carefree Spirit was the first (and still the only) shrub rose after that revolution of care to win the coveted AARS award (awarded in 2009). Thanks to God that the rose marketers have grown some sense about the characteristics the public desires in new roses, because roses like 'Carefree Spirit' may yet rescue us from 'Knock Out' hell. If my garden visitors can recognize and covet such a rose, then so will the public at large.


 My 'Carefree Spirit' is about three feet tall, and she is supposed to reach 5-6 feet at maturity.  She bloomed in the late group of roses in my garden, with 'Madame Hardy' and 'Chuckles' and 'American Pillar' to name some other late roses, so she's bringing up the rear of the first rose bloom and starring in her own time.  I will admit that her allure is entirely due to the bounty of her blossoms because 'Carefree Spirit' is scentless to my nose and she isn't thornless either.  Ah well, no rose is perfect.  Except 'Madame Hardy' of course.  And, my readers, let us please choose to ignore the closeness of the phrase "bounty of her blossoms" to "bounty of her bosoms" in English.  I'm an old man, love of roses can possible be taken too far, and I should be allowed my small literary illusions without comment.

Reminiscences

I'm musing far from the garden today, prompted by random recollections that refuse to be ignored.  Although I made a quick trip into my garden today in the chilling temperatures and dim light of early morning, Memory Lane beckoned later and took my thoughts on a detour.

It's Mrs. ProfessorRoush's birthday, and one of my presents to her, (yes, I'll take credit for anything I can) was to relieve her of dropping her smaller clone off at school.  The smaller clone normally could drive herself but temporarily has lost her keys for the umpteenth time.  Later, sitting in the line of cars at the High School, it suddenly struck me that the gaggles of giggling girls, even the older ones, just seem so...teenagerish.  

It was not that way in my far ago youth.  The female Seniors of my High School were sophisticated and cool and so...unreachable.  Ingrained into my soul is the time that I spent in typing class as a 9th grader, the first 9th grader in my school to be allowed into the class (and yes, it was a TYPING class, pre-computers and computer keyboards).  I was placed into the back row of typewriters, seated between the polished and refined Prom Queen (a senior) and the voluptuous senior Pom-Pom Captain (who actually, at that tender age, had Breasts and occasionally displayed glimpses of them even back in those pre-Madonna-influenced times!).  To communicate the experience to another gardener or rosarian, I can only compare it to being the spiky Echinops planted as a companion between the damask 'Madame Hardy' and the extra-large-bloomed Hybrid Tea 'Dolly Parton'. The entire atmosphere in that vicinity was charged, as I recall, with electricity, feminine perfume, and the essence of hyperstimulated nerd.  In hindsight, it is probably easy to understand how I, a 9th grader and the lone male, won the typing award that semester amidst a class of Senior girls.  The practice of touch-typing is immeasurably enhanced when the attention of the typist is everywhere but on the keyboard.

This all brings up a question I don't want to face, though.  Is it the eighteen-year-old females, and our society, who have changed so radically since the 1970's, or is it the ancient and wise gardening (former) nerd?  I cannot provide a defensible answer in fear that the passage of time has colored my view on the matter.  I will only say "Thank You" to 'Madame Hardy' formerly on my right, and 'Dolly Parton' on my left, for providing in my life the beauty and wonder so otherwise lacking in my pre-gardening years.  And, since it's her birthday, I will also hold up and celebrate the even more beautiful Mrs. ProfessorRoush for turning a hopeless nerd into a puttering and partially-useful husband with a modicum of socially acceptable behaviors.  It was a hard road you chose, Honey.

Perpetual Garden Fantasy

A recent post on Gardenweb.com threw me for a momentary loop, but it also turned my thoughts and outrageous fantasies in a new direction.  A simple post from someone talking about his Old Garden Roses being in the peak of bloom seemed innocuous until I thought, "Wait?  What?" and checked the date on the post, and found the date to be correctly listed as the end of November.  Further investigation, of course, revealed that the writer was based in Australia, where evidently early summer has just arrived.  Easy sometimes to forget that the world has gotten a lot smaller with the Internet, isn't it? 

  From: http://www.anbg.gov.au/gardens
/research/hort.research/zones.html

But dream with me a minute, won't you?  Imagine that suddenly you've won the lottery and have riches beyond your wildest dreams.  Planning to buy that yacht for around the world sailing?  Thinking about that trip to Egypt and the Orient to see the Seven Wonders?  Well, it occurred to me that a great choice to spend my unearned gains would be a second home, Down Under.  I suddenly have visions of two seasons of 'Madame Hardy' every year.  Two glorious summers of waves of Old Garden Roses with no need to wait around to see the browning buds and the onset of August blackspot.  Two periods of delicious fragrance from 'Madame Issac Pierre', 'Variegata de Bologna' and 'Salet'.  Two summers a year in the garden.  

And why stop there?  If it's a really big lottery win, homes in Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, and Canada might be in order as well;  four seasons of Madame Hardy in the northern hemisphere and then another season or two in the southern.  Just follow the wave of rose blooms northward, and at the northern end fly to the opposite pole of the earth and start over.  Or back to Texas again to see the succession of daylilies start up.  Bored as the perfect blooms of  'Madame Hardy' fade?  Just a short skip in the private jet and you're back to 'Harison's Yellow' again!  Think those surfers in the documentary "Endless Summer" had it good?  "Hey man, those 'Charles de Mills' blooms look pretty rad, dude" could become our new mantra.

'Ballerina' at Denver Botanical Gardens 06/24/10

I do have to confess it's not the first time a similar thought has occurred to me.  I've always joked with friends that when the rest of the world finally broke me, I would run away to a secluded cabin in Montana.  On a trip this summer to Denver Colorado in late June, I chanced to visit the Denver Botanical Gardens and came upon a most gorgeous display of old garden style roses. Thinking that I'd come across some new David Austin varieties that I'd never seen before, I took a long look at the ID tags and realized that I was seeing the same old garden roses that had bloomed in my garden a month earlier, at  roughly the same latitude, just at 5000 feet higher in altitude and one month later.  At that moment, my crumbling escape cabin in the Rockies got mentally surrounded by a few acres of imaginary roses. Blooming, healthy, disease-free imaginary roses.

While I'm dreaming, do you think it's too much to ask that the cabin would be in a magic deer-free zone of the mountains as well?         

Ravishing Madame Hardy

Over forty posts into this blog and I am remiss by not admitting that while I don't, as a general rule, pick favorites for most things, I do, however, have a favorite rose.  I confess publicly that I love the delectable purity of Madame Hardy.


Madame Hardy

'Madame Hardy' is an 1832 Damask rose that is probably one of the most unique and recognizable roses of all time.  The first indication of her delicate nature is the unique fringed sepals that surround the developing blooms. The blooms open flat and completely, normally revealing a fully double rose of pure white petals around a central green pip, but  in cool weather Madame Hardy seems a little embarrassed about revealing so much of herself at one time and there will be a slight cream or pink blush when she first opens.  Those perfectly formed blooms are held above a light matte green foliage on a bush completely unlike that of modern roses.  Instead of coarse, thick-caned, thorny and stiff legs, Madame Hardy has a perfect vase-like form, with thin long canes that seldom branch, but run from foot to head, and her thorns are reserved and ladylike in their lack of aggressiveness.  And the fragrance!  Sweet honey with overtones of lemon, Madame Hardy has a perfume that is strong and at the same time light upon the senses.  She doesn't beat you with fragrance like an Oriental Lily, she entices you, she lures you, and finally seduces you into worship.  If I were to chose a single word to describe this consummate lady, it would be "elegant."  She blooms only once a year, Madame Hardy, but when she blooms the angels have come to earth and blessed us with a glimpse of heaven. 

Madame Hardy was known to be a special rose from the beginning.  Her breeder, Monsieur Jules-Alexandre Hardy, was the Superintendent of the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris and an acknowledged expert on fruit trees, dabbling in roses on the side.  Some references, including Michael Pollan in Second Nature, a Gardener's Education, state that Monsieur Hardy was the head gardener for the Empress Josephine's rose collections at Malmaison, but the timing seems a bit off to me since Monsieur Hardy was born in 1787 and would only have been 25 years old by the time Josephine died in 1812.   All sources agree that Monsieur Hardy named this rose after his own wife, a testament to his devotion for eternity, and if that was his intention, he couldn't have chosen better.  One source states that the original name for this rose, after his wife, was 'Félicité Hardy', while another source gives the wife's name as Marie-Thérèse Pezard, but regardless, the rose has come to us down the ages as 'Madame Hardy'. According to Alex Pankhurst, in Who Does Your Garden Grow?, "by 1885 there were over six thousand varieties of rose available....that year a French rose journal recommended 'Madame Hardy' as one of the best..."  More recently, the celebrated British rose expert, Graham Thomas, wrote, “This variety is still unsurpassed by any rose.”

Alas, for all rose fanatics, Madame Hardy remains chaste in the garden and won't form hips or contribute pollen to other roses.  She would have undoubtedly been a great source for breeding a line of fantastic modern roses, but leaves us with no rivals, only her own beauty to be admired.

Statueholics Anonymous

I have a problem. I am a Garden Statueholic. I sometimes go to plant nurseries for the sole purpose of surveying their statues and at such times I never set foot in the plant sections. I covet large garden statues. I crave small garden animals. I lust after cement babes. I often ponder the proper garden placement for a large gargoyle. I aspire to find the perfect garden gnome.

Am I adding garden figures as accents for my plants or do the plants serve only as backdrops to the statues?  I worry that I'm overdoing my collection of small cement rabbit statues, but I will readily admit that the few times I've broken down and bought a really nice, expensive statue, I've never regretted the addition to my garden. Take the five foot tall Aga Marsala statue that sits in my rose garden. She's surrounded by white 'Madame Hardy', purple 'Cardinal de Richelieu', and is backed up by the tall pink Canadian roses 'William Baffin' and 'Prairie Dawn'.  Neither the roses nor Aga would look as good alone.  And Mrs. ProfessorRoush once made fun of my purchase of the Kon-Tiki head below, but facing east and surrounded by the yellow Kordes rose 'Rugelda', it just seems to be biding its time in luxury, patiently waiting for the 2012 apocalypse, doesn't it? 

I'm forming the GSA (Garden Statueholics Anonymous) and any afflicted gardener is welcome to join simply by adding a comment to this blog.  We're going to have to modify the traditional twelve-step program a bit, though. For one thing, no one has ever been successfully treated so finding sponsors will be difficult.  For another, none of the members will want to make amends.  Maybe we'll just make it a one-step program and we'll all just admit we can't control our addictions to stone or brass garden art and then we'll start a statue bazaar in a large Midwestern city.  We need to do something, though, for those poor gardeners who believe pink flamingos and painted plastic gnomes are the height of fashion.