Purple Wow Factor

'Orpheline de Julliet'

I think this blog is far past due for a rose update, don't you agree?  Old Garden Roses are nearly always beautiful and generally healthy little floral critters, but even these time-selected varieties seldom bring me to my knees with awe.  This particular new rose in my garden, however, 'Orpheline de Julliet’, is certainly making me sway on my feet if only just a little.

I planted 'Orpheline de Julliet' in 2017, a small band without much substance at the time, but a lot of promise.  She survived the drought of last year, growing a little but not spectacularly.  This year she has grown to approximately 2 feet tall and wide, and is finally giving me a show that I hope will only grow over the years as she reaches her advertised mature height of 6 feet tall.

'Orpheline de Julliet', whom I'll nickname "Orphie" here, is a Gallica rose of unknown heritage.  Some sources trace her to William Paul's The Rose Garden published in 1848, while others claim she was listed in Vibert's catalog in 1836 and give her a pre-1836 birthdate.  According to Brent Dickinson, the name translates to "July (female) Orphan," so named because she often blooms later than most once-blooming roses, an orphan at the end of the rose season.  Here, in Kansas, I wouldn't call her particularly late, as she is blooming along with 'Madame Hardy' and right at the tail of the main rose bloom in my garden.  Officially, helpmefindrose.com lists her as "crimson and red", with a strong fragrance, full quartered bloom form, once-blooming, and with a Zone 4 cold tolerance.

'Tuscany Superb'

The lure of Orphie, however, is in those deep crimson blooms.  I've seldom seen a rose with such deep color, similar to 'Tuscany Superb' but with more full flowers and even deeper tones.  My 'Tuscany Superb', seen at right, struggles in the garden, while Orphie is drawing my attention right from the starting gate and is much healthier and more robust. Set off against a light green matte foliage, the blooms fairly pop from the bush across the garden, don't they?  Yes, 'Orpheline de Julliet' will be a keeper in my garden, with proven survival power and the ability to make Mrs. ProfessorRoush gasp as she comes round to her corner.

Old Friends and New

'Topaz Jewel', risen from the muck

While ProfessorRoush's exterior surfaces are a bit "dampened" by all the rain we've been getting, he was still overjoyed today to see the little bit of "sunshine" to the right, re-entering his garden on a cloudy day after so many years of absence.  This is 'Topaz Jewel', planted in 2009, a nice rose in a lousy spot. Blasted by winter, forage for Japanese beetles, she has survived all that and risen again.  She has not bloomed in my garden for the past two years, and in 2017, in fact, I wrote her off as extinct when I found nothing but a dry corpse of stems in her stead.  Then, last year, among the weeds and the Rosa Mundi that I let spread a little too much in this area during my drought-garden ennui, there was some rose foliage here that looked slightly different than R. mundi, a little lighter green, and a little rougher leaf texture.  This spring there was a start of a stronger growth, now more visibly rugose, and I've been holding my breath for months as this bud grew and grew and matured during the rain until two days ago, the sepals began to spread and showed this brilliant yellow hue, confirming that 'Topaz Jewel' had survived against all odds.  In the midst of all the death from Rose Rosette Disease in my garden, one small bit of rugosa resistance is all I really need to lift me as high as the storm clouds around central Kansas.

In fact, my entire rose garden area is a swamp, a clay-based water basin of pure ooze.  It is placed on a slight slope behind the house, but still, this morning, after an inch of rain Saturday and another 3/4's inch last night, you can see the water standing next to this bed right in front of 'Topaz Jewel' in the photo to the left.  I planted a couple of new roses yesterday in a bed near here, slipping and sliding them into their designated spots, and found that if you dig a hole 6 inches deep anywhere in these garden beds, it will fill instantly with water.  I will probably have nightmares tonight of all the rose roots screaming for oxygen in the yard while I helplessly listen to the storms forecast to visit once again.  'Topaz Jewel' and her immediate neighbors are at least in a raised berm, probably their only salvation at present.


New roses are beginning to bloom this year, however, to fill in the gaps from RRD and to keep my hopes "afloat."  The striped rose pictured at the right, in keeping with my switch to RRD-resistant Hybrid Rugosas and Old Garden Roses, was planted just last year, and today was the first bloom in my garden of Mr. 'Georges Vibert'.  Mr. Vibert, or Georges as I will affectionately call him, is an 1853 Gallica bred by M. Robert of France.  You all know my weakness for striped roses, and this one seemed like an obvious choice to fill in a gap in both my garden beds and in my soul.  I'm hopeful for Georges continued health and vitality in my garden, especially since helpmefind/roses states that the Montreal Botanical Garden rated it as one of it's most disease resistant roses in 1998.

I should finish by apologizing for being unable to resist the water-referencing puns I've "sprinkled" through this entry.  Puns, though painful to the reader, are often, in my opinion, just one manifestation of a tormented writing soul, or, more specifically in my case, one "drowning" in an unusually wet season.

What the Bleep is This?

So, God, I guess you decided that sending me Rose Rosette Disease and wiping out all my modern roses wasn't enough of a trial for me, huh?  A devastating hail wasn't enough?  You didn't remember that your previous gift of Japanese Beetles was surely enough of a plague to throw at me?  You had to find some new pestilence to give me a new challenge?

I was peacefully inspecting the roses on Friday night during a break in the continual storms of the past week, when the skeletonized leaves of the photo above caught my eye.  Gads, I thought, what is this?  Luckily for me, I've been around the rose block, so to speak, and knew immediately what I was looking at; Endelomyia aethiops, better known as the Roseslug.  Or, in it's adult form, a sawfly.   And, as I looked closer, these were on almost every non-Hybrid Rugosa rose in my garden; in other words, on almost all the old garden roses and other hybrids that survived my RRD epidemic.  I've seen them before at the K-State Gardens and in other rose gardens, but rarely in mine and never on some many roses at once.

Of course, I'm not an expert at insect larvae identification, and it could be that these are Allantus cinctus, the Curled Rose Sawfly, or perhaps Cladius difformis, the Bristly Rose Slug.  Still, "my" larvae do not have bristles, nor do they curl up when disturbed, so I'm going to maintain these are Endelomyia aethiops.  Even though I don't really care about the actual identification other than the scientific curiosity of the thing.  I simply want them dead.  I want all of them dead.

Internet sources suggested they can be controlled by handpicking.  Sure, you bet, I'm going to handpick these off of all the dozens of roses out there in the garden. Not!  I also read that they can be removed by spraying with water since they can't climb back onto the plant after they have been dislodged.  And yes, insecticidal soap and horticultural oils are also effective treatments.

Geminy, what a bunch of W.E.E. wimps these internet insect gurus are!  I don't want to just inconvenience these slugs, I want to nuke them off the planet!  I agree with the suggestion of Sigourney Weaver's character (Lt. Ripley) in Aliens; another story about a rapidly breeding destructive set of insects.  "Nuke them from orbit," Ripley said, "it's the only way to be sure."  So I went for the big guns.   Because some of these roses also had a little early blackspot after all the rain, I dusted off my trusty bottle of Ortho 3-in-1 insecticide-fungicide-miticide and went nuclear on these helpless larvae.  You can see the dampness of the spray on the leaves of the second photo.

  

I won't try to defend my actions, except to firmly avow that I carefully followed the label directions. On the contrary, I admit that I enjoyed every second of this momentary lapse from my best attempts to garden organically.  Heck, what good is science anyway, if we can't use it?

Prairie Moon Rising

ProfessorRoush was forced into the mundane chores of garden these past two days on the prairie.  Rapidly growing grass and weeds meant that I spent most of Saturday's 'free time' mowing the lawn and trimming, and most of Sunday's "free time" weeding and planting.  I planted 22 garden pepper plants and 17 tomatoes.  And I also replaced the watermelon and cantaloupe that I planted and previously mentioned in the Showing the Crazy blog entry.  Not surprisingly, the first two didn't make it.  This time I planted 'Sugar Baby' watermelon, 'Ambrosia' and 'Athena' cantaloupes. 

Remember the song "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedance Clearwater Revival?  Lyrics that include "I hear hurricanes a-blowing.  I know the end is coming soon.  I hear the rivers over flowing...There's a bad moon on the rise."  Well, my 'Prairie Moon' peony is rising (upper left), and it's not a bad moon, even though the rain around here has the ground saturated and some folk in town have water in basements again.  'Prairie Moon' is just a beauty, pure white blooms as big as your outstretched hand and healthy bright green smooth foliage.  What's that you say?  The foliage isn't smooth?  Yeah, that's a volunteer hollyhock in front of the peony that I didn't have the heart to root out.  As long as it doesn't smother 'Prairie Moon', I'll let the hollyhock bloom and then grub it out later.   

Speaking of tomato planting, I had the bright idea to plant Mrs. ProfessorRoush's favorite grape-sized tomatoes in the large pots on the back (south) patio this year.   They'll get major sun there if they can stand the heat.  I was hand-digging a hole in the potting soil and the little gray tree frog pictured at the left about gave me a heart-attack, sitting as still as a postage stamp on the edge of the pot.  I almost put my hand right on him!   Here they come again, those sneaky peeping frogs, watching my every move.  Creeps me out, I tell you.

Bella is in the garden with me most days right now, protecting me and making sure the Texas Longhorns don't cross the barbed wire fence.  There is something that just feels right about longhorns on the prairie, isn't there?  Well, may not right to Bella, who seems a little disturbed by these big dumb things in her pasture.