Morning Vistas

A "Vista" is defined as "a pleasing view, especially as seen through a long narrow opening."  This morning, ProfessorRoush was simply content to take Bella on a walk around her garden, and taking photos of the broad pleasing views of his garden through his narrow (phone) camera lens.  I'm not going to write a lot about these pictures today, I'll just note a few of the particular roses visible in them and leave them to speak for themselves.  Before you blow them up to look closer, you must promise not to feel smug about all the unpruned deadwood in the roses and the weeds at their feet.  A gardener only has so much time and Spring came at me fast this year.

Roses, from left to right, are tall 'John Cabot', crimson 'Hunter', pink 'Konigan von Danemark', and fading 'Marie Bugnet'

The irises are spectacular this year.  You can see Bella running ahead to the right, sniffing the ground.

Peony 'Buckeye Belle' sits maroon-ly at the feet of bountiful 'Blizzard' Mockorange

One view of a rose bed looking east as the sun rises.  The near border, left to right, is 'Leda', 'Rosalina', and 'Blush Hip'.  The nearly red rose just behind those is 'Duchess of Portland'.

Front to back, these roses are pink 'Duchess de Montebello', bright red 'Survivor' with 'George Vancouver' to it's left, and behind, tall, and pink 'Lillian Gibson'.

I have been hacking around and reviving this bed and 'Lillian Gibson' looks about as poorly as I've ever seen, but I still think she deserves a photo all to herself.

As does this second 'Survivor' specimen, with mauve 'Hanza' and single 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' following behind it.

Thankful Vistas

Looking through a group of photos that I've saved for the blog today, I found in reflecting on my garden year that I'm most grateful not for the closeups of my prized roses, but for the largest and smallest of those living things that exist in my garden.

Living, as I do, just outside the city limits of a major city in Kansas (if the phrases "major city" and "in Kansas" are not mutually exclusive), I occasionally am quite thankful that my garden, lacking large trees, still has vistas that are separate from the chaotic civilization that surrounds it.  For example, the view (above) from the western side of my garden past the formal rose bed on the left and the viburnum bed on the right, was particularly fetching this past October as the 'Tiger Eyes' Sumac began to add red to it's normal yellow palette, and the remaining fuchsia-pink 'Earth Song' kept merrily blooming on.  In a similar fashion, the overall view from another angle towards that same formal rose bed (below) includes my crude handmade gazebo and my vast southern horizon towards town, the city itself hidden from view except for the roofs of a few houses now visible on the horizon.

I'm thankful as well, for things that the smaller life of my garden teach me, learning industriousness from the examples of bees, and patience from the spiders who lie in wait inside some open blossoms.  Without the killing influence of insecticides in my garden, the faunal world inhabiting every plant expands till sometimes, I don't know if I'm bringing flowers or a menagerie in to Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Unfortunately, she is not as open to the beauty of both as her gardening husband, and so, for my own safety, I must shake out the buds and wash off the leaves before depositing them in the house, destroying the homes of thousands of creatures to keep the peace in my own.