I fretted away the away time, wondering repeatedly if I'd missed my yellow rose beginnings, but came back to a fully blooming bush as pictured here. Something finally is going well in the garden.
But wait, there's more. For the first time ever, after several attempts, I have overwintered an 'Austrian Copper' to see a bloom. Situated in a special spot where I can watch it, with better drainage than I've given it before, and I, at last, have a healthy bush with the promise of future bounty. There are not many blooms this year, but I'll take a healthy young bush any day.Though an old gardener, I am but a young blogger. The humor and added alliteration are free.
Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Ugly Ducklings Shine
Sunday, July 30, 2023
Two Buck Roses
'Spanish Rhapsody' |
It's been some time since I blogged about the roses, but I'm happy to report that most of my Rugosa's are surviving and show no signs of rose rosette at present. And, I noted this week that a couple of my remaining Griffith Buck roses are in their second or third bloom stage and I believe it's high time to share them with you.
I give you first, the delicate shadings of 'Spanish Rhapsody'. I've blogged about her before, but she's too beautiful to ignore. This year, I first noticed her blooming from the window of the kitchen, clear down yonder in the garden, where I could see this diminutive rose blooming its fool head off, defying an attack from last few remaining Japanese Beetles.Described as pink and yellow and stippled at helpmefind/rose, she appears only pink to me this year, although I believe I've seen more yellow from her in the past, such as my blog from 2016. The pictures at the helpmefind linked site show this is one of the more variable roses, with lots of different appearances across the US. 'Spanish Rhapsody' was bred by Dr. Buck in 1984. 'Spanish Rhapsody' has survived since 2015 in my garden, but she is always much smaller for me than her advertised 4 foot height. I don't know that I've ever seen her more than a couple of feet foot tall and wide. Blooms are of moderate size, about 3 inches around, and start out nicely tight like a Hybrid Tea and then the semi-double blooms open quickly to some golden stamens. I pray every season that she remains resistant to Rose Rosette Disease. Certainly, she seems immune to blackspot and powdery mildew. 'Spanish Rhapsody' has a little dieback in my winters.
'Prairie Princess' |
Sunday, July 2, 2023
Weather Woes and Wrong Roses
Doesn't that look beautiful? I considered dancing naked in the rain, but realized the neighbors might talk.
In other news, I do have a number of new roses growing this summer, courtesy of the Home Depot "Minor Miracle" that I wrote about earlier and this one is one of the new ones, a fabulous florescent orange-red semi-double that screams "watch me" in a exhibitionist display of pride. On the downside, I don't know what variety it really is. Two of the labeled Home Depot 'Hope for Humanity' roses look like this and they're obviously not 'Hope for Humanity'. My best guess is that I now have two 'Morden Fireglow', although the foliage seems more glossy than I remember that rose. In its favor, the stems are red like 'Morden Fireglow' and the color is so unique, it is hard for it to be anything else. Certainly, this isn't a reborn 'Tropicana' and time and winter hardiness may reveal its secret identity. Of similar concern is that the labeled 'Rugelda' I purchased appears to be a 'Hope for Humanity' instead. The 'Morden Sunrise' and 'Zephirine Drouhin' seem correct, so they're not all labeled wrong, but 'John Cabot' hasn't bloomed and isn't acting like a climber. Who knows what I've got?I said I would end on a (semi)-high note, right? You didn't really expect a fully happy ending from this blog did you? After all the times you've been here? My mystery rose is a beautiful rose indeed and certainly provides some color to contrast the subtle daylilies, but is it really too much to expect that if I'm paying $13 or $14 for a big-box-store rose, it would be labeled correctly? How hard is that?Sunday, May 21, 2023
Blush Hip
'Blush Hip' |
'Blush Hip' |
'Leda' |
Sunday, May 14, 2023
Beauty Pageants
'Marie Bugnet' |
'Marie Bugnet' |
'Blanc Double de Coubert' |
'Blanc Double de Coubert' |
'Sir Thomas Lipton' |
'Sir Thomas Lipton' |
Sunday, April 2, 2023
Minor Miracles
Monday, August 8, 2022
Please Don't Eat the Pretty Things
'Scabrosa' |
Sunday, May 29, 2022
Rosa Emily Carr
'Emily Carr' |
Please allow me, in the midst of the late May flush of roses, to begin in the next blog entry or three to introduce you to a few "new" friends. New, at least, to me, nearly new to my garden, survivors of at least one winter without protection and survivors of my general lack of proper garden attention.
This week, I bring you 'Emily Carr', a refined Canadian lady that I was introduced to in 2019. She was, at that time, only 12 years past her debutante ball, for 'Emily Carr' was debuted to the world in 2007 (another less-reliable source says 2005) as one of the later introductions of AgCanada. Bred by Lynn Callicott in 1982, she is a member of the AgCanada 'Canadian Artist Series', the only member of that series that I believe I grow. Her namesake (12/13/1871 -3/2/1945) was a Canadian Post-Impressionist artist and writer of British Columbia who was inspired by the Northwest Indigenous peoples and the British Columbia landscape.
'Emily Carr', as you can easily see, is a semi-double, bright red bloomer of medium stature and glossy, healthy foliage. At maturity, she is supposed to become 4 foot tall, although my 3 year old specimen is only 3 feet at present and a pair of posts on Houzz suggest that she goes over 5 1/2 feet in some instances. She struggled her first two years in my garden, an uncertain survivor of the triple plagues of cold, drought, and deer, but this year she popped up strong and solid, a striking arterial-blood-red scream against the pale pink tones of 'Blush Alba' behind her. According to helpmefindroses, she is a direct descendant of 'Morden Cardinette' and 'Cuthbert Grant'. I tried and lost the former, but 'Cuthbert' is a solid, healthy rose for me, slowly ending his own first bloom flush in his 22nd year. Father to daughter, those deep red genes held strong.'Emily Carr' is supposed to repeat reliably in flushes, but as she didn't have much of a bloom over her struggling years, I'll have to see what she can do for me this year. At least she seems to be rose rosette immune, having survived the onslaught of virus in my garden even during her struggles. I sadly can't detect much in the way of fragrance from her, a disappointment since I've always thought 'Cuthbert Grant' had a decent fragrance here in my garden and he, himself, was a descendant of fragrance legend 'Crimson Glory.' It's a pity that fragrance can be lost in so few generations if breeders don't pay attention.
One never knows where research on a given subject will lead in these days of Internet bounty. In this case, my searches for 'Emily Carr' led me down a rabbit hole to the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre and it's "49th Parallel Collection of Roses." And now I'm left wondering what 'Chinook Sunrise' would look like and how it would perform in Kansas. A little late to obtain this year, but maybe next year I can find her.
Sunday, May 22, 2022
Storm Smiles
While these storms can also bring trouble, and the time-lapse here might make many uneasy, they only bring me calm and a sense of wonder at the power behind it all, the power building at my very doorstep and passing me by, God and the Grim Reaper together at once, mysterious and yet always nearby.
Sunday, November 7, 2021
Keeps on Ticking...
'Champlain' |
And I can't, I can't be mad this morning about the time change. So much disruption of our diurnal rhythms and so much anger over political power wielded autocratically and irrationally just isn't worth the fight today when I'm staring at the happy face of 'Champlain'. Oh don't get me wrong, I woke up at 4:00 a.m. instead of 5:00 a.m. because my soul didn't get the memo about changing rhythms, and I waited the same amount of time for the sun to rise after waking. I just know now that I'll be driving in again with the rising sun in my eyes, endangering every walking or biking schoolchild for another month, and that I'll now be driving home in darkness every evening instead of having another hour of light to enjoy.
'Polareis' |
Okay, yes, I'm mad as usual about the time change. I'm mad that my chances for a heart attack are greatly increased this week and that automobile accidents will increase due to bureaucratic political whimsy. As I've said before, a pox on the houses of every politician, Democrat or Republican, who doesn't repeal this nonsense and leave us on daylight savings time all year long. As I vowed last spring, I'm staying on Daylight Savings. If you want ProfessorRoush, you'll find him with his watch and computers set to EST, my new solution to the biennial B.S. imposed on us by our elected nonrepresentatives. Stores and schedules will now just have to confirm to my time, ProfessorRoush Standard Time.