Tropical Surprises

I don't want to forget to relate that while I was communing with the art of tropical gardening during my time at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, I also learned a bit, ever the student thirsty for knowledge.  For one thing, I was fascinated by these large seed pods hanging from a trellis in the orchid room.  What were they, mangoes?  Some form of papaya?  There was no botanical marker that I could find at the base of the small tree they came from, so I finally had to search out a Marie Selby docent for the identification.

These, my friends are cocoa pods, just starting to ripen with the delicious seeds that will eventually become my favorite candies. I had seen them before, growing almost wild in Granada, but I had never seen them ripen.  Here, at last, is a reason to have a winter home in Florida; chocolate ready to pick off the tree!  Well, perhaps some processing would be involved, but still!   What will they think of next, vanilla from orchids?

Another surprise botanical treat on my visit was the finding, first, of bananas growing on an actual banana tree.  This bunch of bananas was badly beaten and broken down, but all the same they looked like they would someday be nourishing.  I was tempted to pick a fruit to compare tastes with the store-bought variety, but one never knows, these days, when a surveillance camera can be lurking and I don't need Homeland Security to open yet another file about me.

My largest botanical wonderment greeted me, however, from an adjacent tree; this incredible display of a banana flower ready to open and be fertilized so that the crown of ovaries above could bear fruit.  What a prehistoric feeling one gets while staring at this 8 inch long and plump blatant display of pure sexual reproduction brazenly free and open to the tropical air.  One glances behind oneself at a first glimpse and would not be surprised to see a Velocirapter creeping up to make a Mesozoic meal of modern man. What I'd give to be there now, a week later to see the flower open in all its musky splendor.

I had no idea, all these years of eating bananas, of the mechanics of the process.  Flower heavy and fecund, ovaries patiently presented for fertilization.  Once the world hits on a good pattern, it never lets go, eh?    

I Told Them So

I tried to warn them. I really did.  You heard me just a week or so back, right here on this blog.  "Hush little darlings" I said, "Go back to slumber, it's too early."  Well, see them now, regretting their decision to open up quite so early.  Mother Nature strikes once more.  Now that I think about it, I believe I have taken a picture of daffodils covered by a little snow every year I have lived here. The impatient little devils!

I was hopelessly praying that my Magnolia stellata would hold off, but alas, this latest cold spell and bit of snow hit just when its display was at its peak.  I so wish I had taken a picture of the shrub yesterday before the blossoms browned and withered, if only for bragging rights.












Even worse, the musky scent is gone, vanished, without a trace from the flowers reduced to brown tissue.

I can only still hope that the few remaining unopened buds of the Magnolia keep their beauty and their fragrance hidden until better days appear.





And this apricot will certainly not be a producer this year.  There is a reason that Kansas is not a major exporter of apricots and you are witnessing it.

Still, however, the apricot blossoms and snow make a really nice photo composition, don't they?  Click on the closeup photo of the apricot blossoms and blow it up in all its splendor.  Wow, what subtle pastel colors!











And then there are the Scilla and the Siberian iris, peeking sky blue and purple out above their snowy feet.  Good gracious, can we just start spring over again?











I say again, "Garden, go back to sleep".  There will be time later for all this foolishness.  Let sleeping gnomes lie.

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (Photo Heavy)

I find it surprising that I've blogged now for a blue million years and haven't ever mentioned Marie Selby Botanical Gardens.  My parents have a vacation home just south of Sarasota, and so I visit Selby Botanical on almost an annual basis, an oasis of peace for me amid the tumult of vacation.  In fact, I was just there in late February, a planned break from the Kansas winter even though in the 5 days I was in Florida it was only a few degrees warmer there than Kansas.  If you've never been to Selby, it's well worth a couple of hours and the $20 admission to stroll the gardens, and even worth the extra $5 to tour the Selby Mansion on the grounds if you're into such domestic arrangements.  First and foremost, of course, one should appreciate orchids, the centerpiece of the Selby indoor conservatory.


I, myself, have always been a little partial to the blue or purple vandas.  I don't know why, I just am.










In the orchid house, these large containers "spilling" with a cascade of orchids make a fabulously creative display.








Even here at Selby, one cannot seem to escape the abominations of social media.  This "selfie stop", as declared by the sign, is a popular place for photos;  in fact I had to wait around for 5 minutes to get a picture of it without people around.  At least it hasn't been discovered, to my knowledge, by the Kardashians as yet.  Thank god the "K's" don't seem to be gardeners.










The larger grounds at Selby are fantastic.  Here, at a fork in the path, the bamboos grow taller than trees.















And, surprising to me, this arid succulent display does quite well here in a tropical climate.









I seem to spend a lot of my Selby time admiring the garden ornaments as much as the flora, however.  This little mushroom/toad house/fairy home drew me back again and again.













There are water features in several areas, but none worked better for me than this waterfall.  I played with exposure for softening the falls, but the real art was hiding in the little water nymph beneath the ferns.

Another statue, this "Mayan" figurine, called to me from its hidden grotto back in the orchid house.

This year I visited on a cloudy day, but the diffused light made for some marvelous photography at times.  These dark salvias made a nice photo for me against the storm in the distance, while changing the exposure really made them pop from the background.  Several visitors seemed to think these were lavender, but I kept my know-it-all trap shut.  No reason to spoil their enjoyment.

A low-lying swampy pool near the mansion, however, gave me what I thought was the best photo of the day;  a water lily to rival Monet for sheer beauty.

So, if you get near Sarasota, Florida, go ahead and feel free to drop the family off at the Ringling Bros. Circus Museum and go over to where the fun really exists;  at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens!

Seeds of a Revisionist Garden

In my "revisionist" gardening mode, for the first time in years, I am attempting some indoor seed-starts.  Normally, I'm a dismal failure at indoor propagation, failing both at getting the seeds to sprout (I tend to keep the soil too moist), and in the hardening-off transition to the outdoors.  It is the latter failure that I most dread.  I occasionally get some decent seedlings going of this or that plant, only to see them crash and burn outside because I put them in too much sun and then forget to water them.  I actually feel pity for most seedlings placed in my hands.

I was spurred into action by a colorful rack of organic seeds at the Selby Botanic Gardens last week (more on that soon), when I came across an open-bred zucchini named 'Dark Star', which listed its attributes as drought-tolerant and open habit.  Dare I hope that it might also be a little more resistant to my ubiquitious squash bugs?  With nothing to lose, I purchased a package, transported it into flyover country, and planted half the packet (10/20 seeds) last Saturday.  This morning, lo and behold, there be zucchini seedlings here!

Somewhere, I've missed the zucchini breeding revolution that resulted in 'Dark Star'.   Bred by Bill Reynolds and Donna Ferguson of Eel River Farms, and released by Seeds of Change in 2007, 'Dark Star' is a less variable selection of 'Black Eel', the latter a cross of 'Black Beauty' and 'Raven'.   Really, it's quite a story and you can read about it at the Organic Seed Alliance.  Truthfully, however, knowing nothing of the story behind it, it was the seed packet that lured me to an impulse purchase.


I also have an itch this year to do a better job at growing flowering sweet peas than my previous efforts.  Rather than just throwing them into the cold March ground, praying that the rabbits leave them to grow, and then hoping they flower before the hot Kansas sun fries them into oblivion, I chose to try to start them indoors.  Hopefully, that will give them about a month's head start over normal growing conditions and I can likely transplant them within just a couple of weeks into a much nicer, manure-enriched bed than my regular alkaline clay-pot soil .  I just hope my new seed setup, in a direct southern window supplemented by a pair of daylight-frequency LED spots, is up to the task.

Oh, and if you liked the term "revisionist gardening," stay tuned because I might just copyright it and continue to write in that mode.  It comes from a deep place in my gardening soul right now.

Growing, Older

Just last Saturday, I walked into a Half-Price Books and walked out several minutes later and $70 poorer with two sacks of printed pleasure.  Thank God that the greater world has not realized the real value of the written word on paper and the vast majority of tomes have never yet reached the price of rubies and diamonds.

Foremost among the jacket blurbs that I thought would be intriguing was this book, Growing, Older, by Jane Dye Gussow.  I'm happy to report that its 200+ pages lasted only one plane trip, with only ten pages left over to finish after the last plane pulled up to the gate. The memoir, subtitled "A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables," is a series of thoughts and essays that begin with the story of the unexpected and rapid loss of Dr. Gussow's husband, Alan, to pancreatic cancer, which occurred in 1997.  Briefly glancing at the text in the bookstore, I was captured by her surprise to find that, after 40 years of marriage, she didn't really miss her husband, as she detailed her resultant guilt over moving on.  She found herself happily skipping down a street only a few weeks later and realized that while she would describe her long marriage as a good one, and would never have considered leaving it, she also recognized that an enormous amount of her energy and efforts went into the care of a socially awkward and dependent husband.

Those thoughts were the textual equivalent of "click-bait" to draw me into the book, but most of the memoirs are actually about gardening and living in the smaller space on the banks of the Hudson River, where she and Alan had downsized only a few years before his death.   Finally, here, I found a kindred soul with at least as many gardening trials and tribulations as I often whine about.  Dr. Gussow's garden floods several times a year and she is beset with muskrats, skunks, and other pests, all while she tries to raise the majority of her diet on the small plot of land.

I keep referring to her as Dr. Gussow because the now quite elderly lady is an accomplished professor of nutritional ecology, who still teaches an active university course every year while living what she teaches.  She was a pioneer in the local and regional food movement, perhaps THE pioneer as recognized by Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver, and, throughout this book, she drops a multitude of facts about the real cost of food production into her conversations.  Well into her 80's, she still actively gardens, living mostly off her own produce, although what she terms "2-person and 3-person rocks" now require more help to move out of her garden than in previous years.

Dr. Gussow has another previous text, This Organic Life, that I've run across, but never read.  You can be sure that I'll be searching for it in the dusty bookstores of my life until I find a decent hardcopy to keep next to Growing, Older.

Postscript:  In Growing, Older I found a quote that I really like:  "As long as one has a garden, one has a future.  As long as one has a future, one is alive."  Gussow attributes it to Frances Hodgson Burnett.  I like it enough I may replace the Thomas Jefferson quote at the top of my blog.  What do you think?

Inkling of Spring

Magnolia stellata 02/19/17

I had an inkling of spring.

In the garden today, while tearing down a bit of old fence, I had an inkling of spring, provided by my Magnolia stellata.  I had an inkling and I'm ashamed to say that my first thought, after having the inkling, was to wonder about the exact definition and origin of the word inkling.  You might think I should have been more concerned about the Magnolia, but such a straight-forward journey seldom occurs inside ProfessorRoush's attention-deficient mind.  It was inkling first, and then Magnolia.

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary: inkling derives from the Middle English word yngkiling, meaning to "whisper or mention," and perhaps further from the verb inclen meaning "to hint at."   Okay, so now I know that even the linguists aren't sure of the origin of the word, but at least the definition is fairly straightforward, meaning "a slight indication or suggestion."  Okay, I got it, I had a hint of spring today.  If so, why didn't I just think "oh, there's a hint of spring?"  No, it couldn't be that simple, could it?  I had to make inkling my vocabulary word of the day.

Pussy willow 02/19/17

Returning our attention to the Magnolia stellata, however, it is important to understand that my inkling derived from the fact that it has decided to begin peeling off its fuzzy winter coat quite prematurely, enticed by a few days of warm sunny weather.  Those delicate buds are exposed far too early, no proper garments under the coat, just lacy undergarments exposed before full consent is obtained.  I fear that the cold spell predicted later in the week will send a chill deep into this flower's innards, an ill wind blown up its skirt.

Likewise, I also noticed that the pussy willow (sorry the photo is blurry) on the other side of the garden is showing a little fuzz at the end of its prepubescent buds, an enticing bit of maturity destined only to fall victim to the icy reality of this cruel world.  Why, oh why does everything want to hurry along at a breakneck pace of living in the garden?   You want to shout at them, "Hush little darlings, go back to slumber, it's far to early to grow up and bloom."  But, nay, they heed not, speeding towards the inevitable damage of a reckless youth and headstrong nature.

Now I have an inkling of disaster.

It Begins

Two days of unseasonably warm weather last Sunday and Monday drove ProfessorRoush out of the house into the garden to begin what will assuredly be a solid spring of garden restoration, rejuvenation and redesign.  I roused this old sleeping garden gnome, covered as he was in the debris of daylilies and Echinops, from winter slumber, and put him to work alongside me puttering over and poking within the cold ground.

I began in the 55ºF heat wave of Sunday, sheltered from a brisk north wind on the sunny south side of the house, and I cleaned the bed bordering the patio free of dead iris and daylily leaves and the remnants of invasive annual grasses.  It was warm there, warm enough to shed the jacket and sweat a little while absorbing enough sun for Vitamin D synthesis and basking my reptilian brain in sunshine.  I always like to start garden cleanup here, so that the many crocuses and daffodils are not disturbed as they rise and will then flower freely and stand out in the neat clean bed.  The roses here will have to wait until closer to spring.   

Then, on Monday, as the temperatures rose past 60ºF, I jumped ship at work and rushed home to start on the beds surrounding the front (north) side of the house.  The cleanup bug had bitten me deeply by now, and after collecting the remains of Orientpet lilies, daylilies and other perennials, I became convinced that my first major act of the summer had to be the destruction of the two overgrown Thuja orientalis 'Sunkist' that border the windows of the garage.  Fifteen years young, the original plant tag had listed their ultimate size as 2' X 2', but obviously, despite an annual haircut and a more drastic trimming once or twice through the years, these 6 foot giants had overstayed their welcome.  Off with their heads!

There, that's so much better, isn't it?  Now the Orientpet's won't have to lean away from the towering encroachment of the Thuja and the whole area looks brighter and more in ordnung to satisfy my Germanic soul.  I'm not sure what I'll plant in their place, probably another mislabeled 2' X 2' evergreen, but I feel I've made a good start on the garden year.




I didn't stop at the evergreens, however, and made a clean sweep over the entire front bed, removing peony and Knautia debris, trimming euonymus, and freeing the forsythia to shine alone.  The wind is a little more brisk across the front now, but my soul is lifted and refreshed.  That is, after all, the goal of our gardens, isn't it?

Blue Ice

The garden waits, entombed in ice.
Life suspended, frozen time.
Stiff and brittle, brown and silent.
Bowing low to winter's will.

Buried deep, it hides within.
Fire smolders, glazed in rime.
Ice the master, cold its maiden.
Staying spring with binding chill.

Blue the ice, reflecting sky.
Bluer yet, on cobalt glazed.
Crystal water stretches down,
Straining for the frozen ground.

Ice has come, and ice will go.
Sun will shine, new longer days.
Winter trembles, spring will win.
 Melting cobalt's shining crown.

Just a little ode to the ice storm that really wasn't.  Yes, we got some ice here in the Flint Hills, perhaps a quarter inch, more likely an eighth.  Not nearly the shel-icing predicted and simply an expected moment of winter caused by the collide of different weather fronts.  The only bright color in my garden is now the bottle tree, a shining gem with a fantastic multi-faceted coating.  It was for this moment that I cemented the post deep in the ground years past, stalwart against the worst of wind and storm, to shout defiance at the winter's worst.  I could only wish today for sunshine, to make it glisten and shine, if only for the briefest moment. 

Still Here...Until the Icepocalypse

ProfessorRoush hasn't slept in, self-defined as any prone position of my body after 6:00 a.m., for years, but I had plans to make it until at least 7:00 a.m. this first morning of a three-day weekend.  Unfortunately, Miss Bella decided that she needed to protect me against the meanderings of monsters sneaking about the prairie and she moved up from the bottom of the bed to sit on my chest, facing the door and huffing to indicate her alarm, around 6:30 a.m.  When she didn't stop, I got up to prepare defenses against a home-invading horde of Huns and found that my mildly obese mutt was correct in all ways except for the home-invasion.  This particular horde of Huns was perfectly content to keep grazing around the mailbox, undisturbed by the barking Bella behind the glass storm door.  Perhaps they were expecting delivery of a late Christmas package and awaiting the mail truck.

We are expecting an ice storm here sometime tonight, and while I am happily anticipating the enforced solitude and the early garden pruning that the storm will initiate, the rest of Manhattan seems to be fearing that the end of civilization is upon us.  A quick trip to the grocery store for sliced ham on the way home last night revealed that the neighboring population had cleaned out the local supermarket of all bread, milk, sticks of butter, and, to my surprise, every package of lunch meat available.  I came home, amused and complacent in the knowledge that we have enough dry cereal and pasta in the house to tide us over until planting weather.  I'm even more secure that we can make it to warm weather after this morning's sighting of potential food on the hoof.   If they are going to eat my roses, the least they can do is hang around for dinner.

I'm quite serious about hoping that we get enough ice tonight to flatten the garden.  At the end of next week, temperatures are forecast in the mid-50's and I'm in a perfect mood to bulldoze and start over anyway, so que sera sera.  I miss you, Doris Day.  What a beautiful voice and bubbly actress.  Once upon a time, movies and television programming was more interesting than a group of profane idiots arguing over who should or shouldn't be sleeping with whom.  

Baby Got Hips

I like big hips and I can not lie
You other gardeners can't deny
That when a rose shows up with its foliage rough and tough
 And puts some red balls all around
You get glad, want to make some jam
'Cause those hips ain't full of spam
Seeds in those hips she's wearing
I'm hooked and I can't stop staring
Oh baby, I want to plant them wit'cha
And take your picture

Sorry, but once again, Baby Got Back seems to be my muse for starting a post.  Our first frost is finally upon us,almost 4 weeks late, and 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' is ready, ripe hips shining in the sun.  These hips are the biggest and juiciest of the rugosas that I grow, and in these, I can finally see why wartime Britain relied on rose hips as a source of Vitamin C.  The first hip, at the top, is larger than a quarter, and the second is nearly that large.  Many sources state that these hips should be accompanied by fall color changes in the foliage, but I have yet to see my bush provide any color this fall.  Perhaps she will develop it later, once that first frost does its damage.

I do intend to plant the seeds within this scarlet dreams this winter and try for a crop of Rugosa hybrids.  After the loss of so many roses to Rose Rosette, I might as well hope and pray that 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' was indiscreet with one of the Griffith Buck or English roses in the vicinity, making little roses that could have some RR resistance.  A gardener can hope.

Our average first frost in this area is around October 15th, but today, November 13th, is our first this year.  The view below was out my back windows into the garden as the sun rose this morning, bright and determined to chase away the frost.  I spent the cold morning indoors, and then ventured out into my garden on a beautiful afternoon to trim some volunteer trees from the garden beds; mulberry, elm, and rough dogwood are the usual culprits here.  It wasn't a huge chore, but I'm nibbling my way back into the garden slowly, picking away at the things that bug me the most from this dismal year.  For once, I welcome winter and I want a cold one to sweep the slate clean, so I can start over anew.

Angry Autumn

'Beautiful Edgings'

I'm angry at my garden.  There, I said it.  I'm ProfessorRoush and I'm angry at my garden.  There's no getting around it, no glossing over it, no mincing words to mitigate it.  The first step on the path to mindful recovery is always, no matter the circumstances, to admit your transgression.  It's not rational and it's not reasonable, but I'm angry at my garden.

I'm sorry, friends, that I haven't posted in such a long time.  I've been emotionally disengaged from my garden since the last days of April, lo those many Kansas days ago.  Disengaged since the late hailstorm ruined my flowery May.  Roses, irises, peonies; I've missed them all. Fruit, any fruit, was nonexistent in my garden this year.  No strawberries, grapes, blackberries, apples, peaches, and but a few cherries. You'd think that the usual summer daylily bounty wouldn't have been affected, but even the daylilies were subdued, either from the hail, or from all the excess rain.  Yes, to add injury to the hailstorm, my summer was filled with rain, normally welcomed in a hot July, but this year the rain just added misery; sprouting weeds everywhere, making a mess of the vegetable garden, and drowning the tomatoes and peppers.  We are officially, currently 8 inches over our average annual rainfall of 24 inches.  Rain is normally viewed as a blessing here, but 1/3rd more rain than normal on a garden that I've primarily filled with drought-tolerant plants is not a positive development.

The weather, of course, isn't my only excuse for a lousy garden.  There has been competition for my attention by events at work and by life in general, both of which couldn't be put aside as easily as deadheading or fertilizing.  My limited forays into the garden this summer have been to attend to seemingly incessant mowing needs and by occasional blitzkriegs against the hungry hordes of weeds, the latter motivated whenever I couldn't see the normal plants for the wild grasses and pokeweed and thistles popping up everywhere.

I'm also ashamed to relate this to my fellow rosarians, but you might as well know now that I have lost the battle against Rose Rosette disease here.  I've diligently pruned it out as I've discovered it, but as the hot days of August arrived, it became apparent that almost all my modern roses have succumbed; nearly all the Easy Elegance roses, English roses, Canadians and, worst of all, most of my beloved Griffith Buck roses.  Anything with modern breeding, including some "less-rugose" Rugosa hybrids, has abnormal branching and thorns from hell.  If there is any solace, it is that the 'Knock Out' hybrids perished first.

I'm trying, right now, to regain a smidgen of enthusiasm and to reengage with my garden.  I've tried to relish the bright spots during a dismal summer, chief among them the 'Beautiful Edgings' daylily pictured here.  It has bloomed almost incessantly for 4 months now, an ever-blooming daylily if ever there was one, an offering of hope that I cling to with each new daily flower.  This morning, as the fall temperatures start to move in, I noticed that the last honey bees are using its spent blooms for night shelter, slow to move until the sun warms the petals.  And the center picture shows the few remaining buds on the plant this morning, the last apologetic gifts of a graceless garden.

I intend to rebuild this winter, to start anew in any number of spots.  I've chosen to delay my efforts in favor of the "nuclear option," seeking the help of the first frosts to chase the marauders from my grounds and clear the lanes of counterattack.  Next spring, I will see a new garden or freeze in the attempt, less rose-focused but still flush with Old Garden Roses and Rugosas, empty holes filled with low maintenance shrubs and grasses, beds simplified.  And I'm going to plant as many divisions of 'Beautiful Edgings' as I can manage.  

July Drive-By

My, my, how time flies by and leaves us standing in the dust of our best intentions.  I was on track for several months to add bi-weekly notes to this blog, but in the middle of June my resolve ran up against the Kansas climate and melted like butter on a stove. This toadstool photo, taken this morning, is illustrative of our gardening year here.

You see, friends, I came into this gardening year so excited for new life and new growth.  Ample rains in March and April erased our long drought and opened up all the nascent promise of
my garden, a green and growing paradise in my immediate vision.  It was almost perfect right up until we received the hailstorm in the last week of April, a hail that stripped leaf and promise and future.

May was quiet here, quiet except for the few peony buds and roses that survived the hail.  There were few irises, peonies, and roses in my early garden, and as the season developed, it was apparent that there were to be no strawberries, cherries, peaches, or apples to console my feelings.  I struggled even to enter my garden, pained by the lack of bloom and vigor, but I held out hope for my stalwart daylilies.

And then, in late May and through June, the heat struck and the rain stopped.  The garden dried and the ground cracked.  The grass turned brown and even the daylilies slowed their onslaught.  Hemerocallis is a tough genus, but not tough enough for early drought.  They bloomed, but not in their usual numbers or robust cheerfulness.

In late June and early July, it rained again, and kept raining at regular intervals, a unusual pattern for Kansas, and the grass greened up and the weeds rushed in.  Weeds, weeds everywhere, but not a domesticated flower to be seen.  Normally, in July, I can count on mowing every other week and relaxing from the heat.  Not this year, for I have been forced into weekly mowings of the entire yard and weeding at every opportunity.   Roundup is my new best friend.  And the ground is wet, wet enough so that toadstools grow in July right by the front walk.  You can guess that the tomatoes in this area are not performing very well in the wet clay.  Right now, the only crops that look to be decent are watermelons and cantaloupes.

And so I stand, on the brink of August, too busy with other things to garden, too depressed to even look at my devastated strawberry bed, too chagrined to even hope for a colorful fall.  I'll write when I can.  I've saved a few photos of the best of the year.  Maybe I can summon the cheerfulness in August to highlight them.

Until then, adieu.

Spanish Rhapsody

'Spanish Rhapsody'

About time for a new rose, I think. I've written about this one before, but I've got some better pictures now and she's a survivor.  Allow me to reintroduce you to 'Spanish Rhapsody', a Griffith Buck rose bred in 1976 and introduced in 1984.   I planted her late last summer, and she seems to have survived at least one very dry winter without protection here on the Kansas prairie.  She's blooming her head off now, her first season in my garden, and I'm in love with those delicately colored blooms.

'Spanish Rhapsody' is a shrub rose, officially labeled as a pink blend, although the blend is actually pink, yellow, and something stippled that approaches deep rose.  The medium size bloom starts out with hybrid-tea-form and then opens over a day or two into a semi-cupped double blossom with yellow stamens.   The blooms primarily are one-to-a-stem, but there are some clusters as well.   I'm convinced that the petals darken the first day or two, and then start to lighten as they age. There is a medium fragrance, raspberry-like as advertised by others.  Take a look at the photo on the left, which shows several phases that the blooms pass through.  Try to ignore the two copulating Melyridae on the bloom at the top right of the photo.  Seems like I'm not the only one stimulated by those blooms.


My 'Spanish Rhapsody' bush is nothing to be excited about yet, only about a foot tall and several months old, but at least she's growing. Leaves are light green with a matte finish.  She's got a little blackspot, maybe about 15-20% of her leaves at present, but I'm not going to hold that against her because we're having an unusually bad blackspot year.  Even 'Carefree Beauty' was having some lower leaf blackspot by early June.   I'm not going to spray 'Spanish Rhapsody' so I can judge how she'll carry through a long summer.

'Spanish Rhapsody' is listed as a cross of 'Gingersnap' and 'Sevilliana'.   According to helpmefind/rose, she is a full sister to 'Gee Whiz', and 'Incredible'.  I've grown both those roses and they do resemble 'Spanish Rhapsody' with their stippling.   Neither of the former survived their third winter here, so I'm hoping 'Spanish Rhapsody' does better in the long run.  She's certainly the prettiest of the sisters in my opinion, the Spanish Cinderella, if you will, of the group.