Paramount Protection

As if the continual struggle to maintain a socially respectable garden (or even a personally disappointing garden) wasn't enough, in addition to the obstacles of pounding rain, hail, late snows, early or late frosts, extreme temperature swings, tornadic winds, drought, insects, plant diseases, poor soil fertility, and just general calamity and misfortune, one must also consider the damages wrought by higher order creatures such as deer, rabbits, and the neighbor's occasionally-present dog.    

I've been oscillating all Spring on an action plan to limit the damage caused to my roses by a particularly prolific passel of rabbits in my garden.   At one point, a few weeks back, I recall looking out my back window and counting no fewer than 4 bunnies visible in my field of view (which likely doesn't even come close to the number that were hiding).  Bunnies, as many here are aware, don't eat daylilies or weeds or Wild Lettuce or native forbs, they preferentially eat, to my chagrin, roses, and go after the young tender ones first! When several young rose starts were pruned almost to the ground, I briefly contemplated ventilating their circulatory and respiratory systems with solid lead deterrents, but instead chose to spend $28 on a 25 foot spool of galvanized wire and made these protective cages, 11 of them so far.   I'll report back on how they work in the long run, but so far they seem to be keeping the rabbits away.

I was even more alarmed at finding this sight one morning; I've been watching this hollyhock patch daily, anticipating a fabulous bloom, but obviously another creature viewed it as an "all you can chomp" smorgasbord.  A creature measuring about 4 foot tall at the mouth and one that I suspect is hooved, with velvet lips and a fluffy white tail.   

The very sight panicked me, for this is just one "clump" in a large area of self-seeded hollyhocks, all otherwise healthy and forming some large delicate blooms.  I was counting on this patch to give me a luscious, even heavenly, hollyhock display, and now I was looking at the potential destruction of all of it, within a few nights, just bare stems and sadness left behind.  Should I stay awake all night with flashlights and a rifle at hand?  Keep pots and pans handy to startle them away? Hang soap and garlic from some stakes in the area?  Build a 10 foot tall peripheral fence topped with barbed wire and mined for 30 feet into the prairie?

Well, I won't keep you in suspense.   I ran quickly to the store to find a fresh supply of a repellent and chose this one.  Composed, among other things, of "putrid egg solids," I can attest, spraying it around the hollyhocks, that it indeed has an unpleasant odor, and I've found that Mrs. ProfessorRoush can detect it from more than 5 feet away, which is the closest she allowed me in her presence for quite some period of time after spraying the plants.  A week has gone by and the hollyhocks are blooming now and I can fully endorse it as a deterrent for close contact with deer and wives.  One takes a win where and when it occurs!

Oh, and the neighbor's dog?   Well, Liquid Fence doesn't work to keep that moron out of my flower beds.  In fact, evidently, rotten eggs are an aphrodisiac when you only have two neurons that synapse together.  At least the bumbling idiot hasn't trampled one of my wire cages yet!

Weeding Sounds

It's a difficult thing to put into words, but you've heard it too, haven't you?  The distinct noise, a screech really, made when one successfully tears a weed whole from the earth, intact roots sliding from soil in a grating exasperated sigh?  A gasp really, a scream of indignation at the gardener's audacity, our murderous intent; the shriek of defeat heard, yes, by the ear, but also transmitted through touch and sight and empathy. To a gardener, no sound is more satisfying to our souls, no human symphony can match the finality, or provide the sheer release of tension  as that resulting from the surrender of a weed to our will. 

A daylily overwhelmed by native Goldenrod 

The pleasurable wail of a weed is a quite different noise and feel and emotional outcome than the sharp snap of a weed as it breaks off, root still nestled in soil to grow another day, this sound a musical phrase ending in notes of laughter rather than lamentation.  The crack of a weed stem is a herald trumpeting the gardener's defeat, an abrupt notification that one has won a tactical victory but lost the strategic skirmish, desired ground still occupied by the enemy, sure to regroup and renew the assault, a Pyrrhic victory and an uncertain future.

  

Wild Lettuce removed with intact roots!

Weeding, to me, is an immersive act, a retreat from the greater garden into the smaller world and environs of the plants.  ProfessorRoush rarely stands above the foliage when I weed, bending to the earth like other gardeners; I crawl instead, a predator at ground level stalking the prey, the unwanted and unloved interlopers in the garden.  I also prefer to weed with bare hands, tactile senses on full alert as I search among familiar textures and shapes, identifying and removing the aliens in a subconscious dance of mind and limbs and fingers.

Barbs on Wild Lettuce

It's a rare Monday morning when I'm not removing barbs from my fingertips or nursing inflamed skin after a weekend of weeding.  Wild Lettuce (Lactuca canadensis), rampant this year, is a particular problem to bare hands, its stem studded with awl-like barbs that I've learned will yield to slow pressure and a brave hand without piercing skin.  Bare-handed weeding is an act of faith, a concession of a little extra pain in exchange for admission to the Weeding Plane, the spiritual space of gardening where hands do the work and the mind is free.    Occasionally jerked back to awareness by a thorn or unexpected nettle, I happily trade the risks of sore hands and splinters for the improved outcomes as my fingers follow the weed to its base, instincts finding the right grasp and angle to wrest the weed from the ground.    

I had a full afternoon of weeding last week, a chore too long-delayed for a garden bed verging on chaos.  I seem to have a bumper crop this year of both Goat's Beard (Tragopogon dubius) and the Wild Lettuce, both deep-rooted and determined to grow, solely intent on forming seed and world domination.  So I dove in among the daylilies and iris, steadily advancing as I grasped and pulled, placing the weed corpses back down among the daylilies as mulch or casting them to the beds edges.  I didn't take a "before" picture, but you can view the aftermath here, the bed rimmed in weeds torn from the soil.   I finished the day by running the lawn mower around these edges, chopping the full weeds into smaller pieces to prevent a dying weed from focusing its last energies on seeds.

I should feel guilt as the weed gasps, more sorrow at the weed's mournful admission of its demise, more regret at glimpsing intact roots exposed to air, but I am remorseless, a machine intent only on my own goals, my own control. The daylily at left, the same one as pictured above, looks much happier freed from the goldenrod and I'm sure if it could talk it would approve of my methods.  I slept soundly that night after weeding even while the music of the displaced weeds replayed in my dreams, content and relaxed in my momentary mastery of this garden bed.  But I also recognize that somewhere out there, on the prairie in the darkness, torn roots are plotting revenge and beginning regrowth., the never-ending dance of the garden and the forces of chaos starting anew. 

Lambert Closse

'Lambert Closse'

Along with 'John Cabot', another new rose to my garden that will have to "grow" to gain my full favor is the pink shrub rose 'Lambert Closse', another of the Explorer Series roses from Ag Canada.  'Lambert Closse' was introduced in 1995 (or 1994 depending on where you read about it) at l'Assomption in Quebec.  He has been in my garden only 2 years, but is already a gangly lad with sparse canes sprawling almost to 5 feet tall.

ProfessorRoush said "sparse canes", but I really should have said "cane", as in the singular form.   My specimen had an odd first growth year, putting up several weak spindly canes, and then a single long thick cane that had me worried it was a sucker from a nearby 'Dr. Huey' plant.  This year, however 2-3 other healthy canes are sprouting from the base and starting to catch up to last year's prodigy.  

'Lambert Closse' (formerly Ottawa 'U33') was a cross of bright yellow Floribunda 'Arthur  Bell' (McGredy, 1959) with pink and the vigorous Canadian semi-climber 'John Davis', an odd match if ever there was one.  The result, against all odds, is a very double flower of the clearest medium pink, borne in loose clusters and a bush reportedly hardy to Zone 3 (I saw the rose lose about 6 inches on its canes this winter here in Kansas).  'Lambert Closse' has glossy, healthy foliage and bears nonremarkable hips in Fall and Winter.

Bred by Dr. Ian S. Ogilvie and Dr. Felicitas Svejda in 1983, 'Lambert Closse' is named for a French merchant, Raphaël Lambert Closse (1618-1662), who made a name for himself fighting the Iroquois and first met his wife, Elisabeth Moyen, while rescuing her from them in 1657.  He was ultimately killed by the Iroquois only 5 years later, so we will leave judgement of the true quality of his tactical military skills to the historians.  

'Lambert Closse' open

So how do I really feel about 'Lambert Closse', the rose?   Well, he grew bigger than I expected (it is officially listed to be 0.85m tall, so much shorter than it grows for me), and the bush is more like an ugly Modern Rose than an attractive vase-form or rounded shrub.  The initially chaste tea-form buds open too quickly for my taste, in a day, to a flat form with yellow stamens.  And I probably won't like the "occasional repeat" that is reported for this rose, although some sources say it blooms continually from June through September when it is mature.  But I love the color, which doesn't "blue" on wetter, colder days, and the foliage has no blackspot or mildew here.  So, it stays.  For now.  

Quivera Roadtrip

ProfessorRoush took a vacation from work and gardening Friday and, with his beloved Mrs. ProfessorRoush, made a 2.5 hour daytrip west and south to explore the Quivera National Wildlife Refuge near Stafford, Kansas (population 925).  Quivera NWR is a 22135 acre sand prairie and inland salt marsh smack dab on the central migratory flyway, and it supports the vast migration of hundreds of thousands of Sandhill Cranes and the much more rare Whooping Crane, as well as 340 other species of migratory birds and the Monarch Butterfly. Established in 1955, it is a virtual oasis for these migrations and sits among ancient sand dunes covered by grasslands, rare geography, geology and ecology for any area, but especially for Kansas. 

Panorama of Little Salt Marsh, Quivera National Wildlife Refuge

ProfessorRoush was interested in exploring his newfound hobby of birding, adding a dozen species to his Life List, and the ever-tolerant Mrs. ProfessorRoush may have initially viewed it as an unavoidable hardship but also showed minor signs of excitement with binoculars in her hands.  It was a gorgeous, perfect weather day, but this is really the wrong season for birding and witnessing the mass migration.  However, my amateur naturalist came out and I made up for the current sparsity of  wildlife by exploring the abundant native Kansas flora you see pictured here in bloom. 

Some, like the Prickly Poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) pictured at the right, are old familiar friends.   I briefly considered that this might be the Hedge-Hog Prickly Poppy (Argemone squarrosa), but it doesn't have the more abundant stem and leaf prickles of the latter, so I believe I've got it right.  Other forbs, like the Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) pictured at the top and above left, were recognizable, but displayed its yellow form rather than the orange flower I'm used to. 

Prairie Spiderwort (Tradescantia occidentalist) added abundant blue accents along the roadsides to the yellow native sunflowers that were just beginning to bloom.  At least I think it was Prairie Spiderwort.   It could also be Common Spiderwort or Long-Bracted Spiderwort, but unlike the former it has hair on its sepals, and it branches more than I would expect for the latter.   While I have plenty of sunflowers to view on my own prairie, Spiderwort is more rare here in the dryer climate of the Flint Hills.   

Of course, there was an abundance of other milkweed in bloom, in this case Showy Milkweed (Asclepias speciosa).

And the Showy Milkweed came complete with a Monarch butterfly (Danus plexippus)!

Leaving the park, driving along roads which were essentially just bulldozed out of the sand dunes, I was delighted to run into these roadside clumps of Buffalo Gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) growing wild and displaying infrequent large orange squash-like flowers.  Based on my reading the mature gourds are not edible, and the crushed leaves give off a fetid odor that give the plant its species name.  

My botanical skills fail, however, in finding an identity for these clumps of pink-flowering shrubs near the water edge, however.   Anyone have any ideas?   Clump-like forms about 3 feet tall and wide, they seemed to be favored perches for the abundant Red-Winged Blackbirds of the area, but I couldn't get close enough for an other than wind-tossed-and-blurry-iPhone picture.  It does, however, with some oil-paint and blurring filters, make a nice photo suitable for framing (below)!

Grow Gallicas!

'The Apothecary's Rose'

While ProfessorRoush is illustrating neglected roses and exposing his failure as an attentive gardener, he must take a moment to bring attention to a pair of true Old Garden Roses, the venerable 'Officinalis' and 'Charles de Mills', both of the ancient Gallica class.  I feel like I repeatedly overlook the beauty and bounty of both these old friends and horribly undercare for them.  Even roses that grow carefree and never seem to need care surely deserve some.

'Officinalis'

I grow both of these Old Garden roses, or, more properly, both roses grow in my garden, despite my poor efforts to support them.   I obtained both as suckers from plants in the K-State garden and they continue to spread in my beds as suckers.  Unchecked, unbounded, I merely stay out of their way and give them room, occasionally intervening to remove grass or native nuisances or self-seeded shrubs from their beds.  For instance, in the vicinity of 'Charles de Mills', or actually growing among a clump of 'Charles de Mills', I recently removed a clump of Roughleaf dogwood, a single Hackberry, and a self-seeded Purple Smoke Tree.

'Officinalis'

The Apothecary's Rose, or Rosa Gallica Officinalis, is a true ancient rose, known prior to 1160.  The "hot pink" color of this rose, without any blue tints in the just opened buds, is one of my favorite "wildling" roses.   Like many Gallica roses, 'Officinalis' is a low-growing, spreading by suckers, rose, and I refer to her as a wildling because she grows wherever she wants to, needing no help from me to proliferate and sometimes hiding and then popping up in unexpected places.  

She only displays these sparsely-petaled semidouble blooms once a year, but this is one of the few roses I can smell from 10 feet away when she blooms.  She's very hardy here, and somewhat shade tolerant, but, like many Gallicas, I have to watch her matte foliage for powdery mildew in most weather and skeletonizing rose slugs in the late Spring.

'Officinalis'

I allow 'Officinalis' to spread as she will over a berm in one bed and beneath some viburnums in another area.  Right now, she's brightening both areas, taking over the stage from 'Harison's Yellow'.   Thankfully, those two roses bloom at different times, otherwise they would clash terribly on the berm site.

'Charles de Mills'

I have another similarly-spreading, low-growing Gallica in my beds, also fragrant and prone to mildew and rose slugs, but the similarity of 'Charles de Mills' to 'Officinalis' ends when they bloom.  The foliage is similar, 'CDM' perhaps having  slightly darker green leaves of a rougher texture, but it bears fully double blooms in a mauve-pink-purple-putrid color with petals that are lighter one the underside. Those unique blooms must be one reason for its nom de guerre 'Bizarre Triomphante', another ancient name for this rose.   Sometimes, those blooms appear like they were cut with a cleaver, they're so smooth and flat, and they darken with age rather than fade.    

'Bizarre Triomphante'

'Charles de Mills' is also an old rose, known prior to 1786, and it's 4 inch wide blooms are slightly larger than the 3-inch blooms of 'Officinalis' and larger than 'Cardinal de Richelieu' another Gallica in my garden.  'Charles de Mills' only reaches knee-high in my garden, but he is a stalwart lad, dependable even in wet weather.  He always looks a little rough to me in this bed, however, a gentleman and a scoundrel all at the same time. 

"Grow Gallicas!" should be a rallying cry of all rose-lovers who want to free themselves from the tyranny of tending to effete modern roses.  You heard it here, again, if not for the first time.

Yellow Prairie Beauties

Yellow Sweet Clover

"The holy eye is the one who is able to see the extraordinary beauties of the ordinary days."  Mehmet Murat ildan  

ProfessorRoush came across this quote this week and thought it worth sharing along with a few photos of the current floral life of the Tallgrass prairie.   It's YELLOW out there, everywhere, as Spring begins to close out and Summer rushes in.   Even the birds are yellow, as evidenced by this American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) hanging upside down on my feeder.      

Yellow Sweet Clover

This airy yellow forb (and the one on the top left) is Yellow Sweet Clover (Melilotus officinalis), a biennial legume which is one of the first plants to colonize disturbed ground.  And if I wasn't an avid reader, or didn't know about kswildflower.org, I wouldn't know that its leaves release a vanilla odor when crushed.  I'm just not in the habit of crushing random plants, but perhaps I should learn.

Sulphur Cinquefoil

The bright yellow of Yellow Sweet Clover is mirrored by the yellow of the aptly-named Sulphur Cinquefoil (Potentilla recta) a non-native species which can become a noxious weed in some areas but seems to behave itself in competition with the prairie grasses.  This plant, a member of the Rose family, or Rosaceae, won't bloom but for a few weeks, but I welcome its "happy face" during late May and early June.

The purple-eyed yellow wildflower pictured on both sides here is another introduced species named Moth Mullein (Verbascum blattariais), another biennial which is, thankfully because it is a non-native, rare on my prairie.  This single specimen, in fact, was the only one I saw this morning, but it's delicate petals were easily spotted above the still-shorter grasses.  Apparently, it can have either pure white or yellow petals, but surprisingly, kswildflower.org doesn't mention this color variation in the text.  

The Wikipedia entry for Moth Mullein correctly describes the color variation, as well as the faint purple tinge on some petals.  Wikipedia also described an experiment by Dr. William James Beal, that, after 121 years of storage, had a 50% germination rate from 23 Moth Mullein seeds (which the skeptic in me questions because how do you get exactly 50% germination of 23 seeds?   Perhaps 11/23 seeds germinated and they rounded up?).

Goat's Beard

A final, easy-to-spot yellow nonnative "weed" blooming now is Goat's Beard (Tragopogon dubius), a tall and ubiquitous member of the Sunflower family that I am pulling up by the bucketfuls from my garden beds.  I leave it alone on the prairie, but, oh how I wish that it didn't spread everywhere by floating seeds similar to a dandelion.  Pulling it barehandedly, the sticky latex sap of this plant is a slight irritant to my palms and really gets my goat. Kswildflowers.org says specifically that it's not an aggressive weed, but I disagree.  Goat's Beard has a long deep taproot that grips firmly when the soil is dry and often just breaks off, but it will pull up intact and whole after a rain, if I'm careful.

Canada Warbler

I'll leave you today with one final spot of yellow, this very young Canada Warbler (Cardellina canadensis) that I found near the College sitting patiently on the ground as if it had fallen from a nest and couldn't fly.  You may be seeing more birds here in the blog, periodically, because this summer I'm on a bird-watching and bird-feeding journey and I'm noticing them everywhere now that I'm looking for them.  I hope you'll indulge my newest passion while I learn; I won't stop blogging about gardens, but every new enthusiasm makes me only better able to grasp and enjoy the "beauties of ordinary days."

A Trip to Ego-Land

ProfessorRoush would like to apologize, in advance, for this brief detour into a landscape populated only by ego and self-indulgence.  Normally immune to the frequent and seemingly random solicitations from internet phishers, I was nonetheless unable to resist further exploring the email below, if only to find out exactly where and why Garden Musings placed in the "Top 15 Kansas Gardening Blogs".   I was hooked, caught and reeled in, and further enticed to actually post the "badge" at the right, simply when I saw that I was 2nd (!) on a list headed by the Dyck Arboretum Blog (Dyck is a 13 acre arboretum in Hesston, Kansas).  I view the latter as prestigious company to my measly efforts!  You can view the list yourself, here.

The email:

The "panelist" referenced here is undoubtedly a computer search engine devoid of any aesthetic senses and, okay, yes, it's an obvious ploy to get me to subscribe to this feed engine and to advertise on it, all, of course, for a minimal monthly fee.  Well, flattered as I am, there is little chance of that, but I was quite happy to see that there was, in fact, some sort of system present for the selection.   For some, like the Dyck Arboretum Blog, it seemed to be due to its social media following on Facebook and Instagram, but also because of something called "domain authority."  A simple search revealed that "Domain Authority (DA) is a score, ranging from 1 to 100, developed by Moz (a popular SEO tool and company) that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs)." A higher DA score indicates a greater potential for a website to rank higher in search results. It's essentially a measure of the website's overall authority and credibility in its specific industry or niche.  For reference, Dyck's domain authority is 38, Garden Musings is 27.  

I was also pleased to find my reader and fellow blogger Brother Placidus, at The Cloister Garden, was also on the Top 15 list. FeedSpot is obviously a discerning business with excellent literary tastes!  Unfortunately for them, their effective appeal to my vanity did not change my motivation or plans for this blog.  It was never intended to make me rich or popular or famous, but is simply an exercise in mental health maintenance by someone who sees writing as an outlet.  The unexpected recognition, however, still lifted my spirits, so this blog entry is credit for their efforts!         

This weekend, I promise I'll set vanity aside again and try to meet your expectations for a short foray into a subject that is actually, you know, garden-related.

Secrets in Transition

ProfessorRoush has been harboring a secret for over a month now, but I'm too excited to keep it any longer.  If I pass it on, do you promise not to tell?  Swear? Pinky swear?  Cross your heart and hope to die? Stick a needle in....oh, whatever?   I just have to tell it anyway or I'll burst.

Recognize the rose pictured at the top right?   That's 'Lillian Gibson', in all her moods and phases from bud to petal fall.   I've written about her before here, and here, but as a mature lady this year, at 14 years old in my garden, she's still completely gorgeous.  And believe it or not, the weed-choked, neglected orphan  pictured on the left, as captured in a snapshot on 5/18/2025, one month after she started blooming, is the worst she has looked in 10 years!  If you only knew what she has survived in the last two years to get here: a random trimming this Spring to keep her from sprawling over the grass and an adjacent fire last year to burn out a pack rat nest in the clematis next to her.  Iron-clad, she has also been steadfast through winter ice storms and summer droughts, survived Japanese Beetles, and seems to be completely resistant to blackspot, mildew, and Rose Rosette Disease.

05/04/2025

Anyway, my secret is that while I was randomly hacking away at this vigorous but almost-thornless rose, I potted up some of the hardwood to try to propagate it.  I'm terrible at propagation, so I made eleven pots, some with three trimmings, hoping I could get at least one survivor.  At one week, on May 4th, in a sunny basement window, completely enclosed in a large clear tub to maintain humidity, the 11 pots looked promising to my eyes and in the photo to the right.   

To my eternal delight and astonishment, at 4 weeks post-potting, on May 22nd, they've all rooted and put out new growth!  The few yellow leaves are warning me they need sunshine and more fresh air if they're going to make it.    We've still got a long way to go, these little rose children and I, because I've tried and failed miserably before, with this exact rose, among others.  I started the transition to less humidity yesterday by slowly decreasing the lid coverage, and, if all goes well, next week I'll transplant them into large pots and move them outdoors under a tree with dappled shade.  

05/23/2025

'Lillian Gibson' 05/08/2025

If they survive to September, I'll provide one to the K-State Garden and others to friends, anyone in my sphere who has room for an 8 foot wide sprawling semi-climber, and I'll plant another one or two myself here for "insurance."  I'm helping preserve history here by prorogating this historic Hybrid Blanda rose, introduced in 1938 by Neils Ebbesen Hansen.  Besides, 'Lillian Gibson' has become my nearly favorite rose and I never want to chance losing her myself!   

Canadian John Cabot

I do have a few "new" roses to share this year; roses that have survived a couple of winter seasons and seem to be reaching their mature growth.   I placed the "new" in quotes because they are new roses to me, but, of course, have been commercially available for some time.

It is my pleasure to introduce you to 'John Cabot', introduced by Ag Canada in 1977 according to helpmefind/roses, although other sources say its introduction was in 1978).  Bred by Dr. Felicitas Svejda in 1969, this rose was named after an Italian navigator and explorer (his English name was John Cabot, but he was known as Giovanni Caboto in Italy), who, in 1497, crossed the formidable Atlantic Ocean to the New World and was the first European to reach Newfoundland since the Vikings.

The 'John Cabot' of my acquaintance is a gangly, thorny, sprawling mass of a rose, with some disheveled pink-red blossoms that open quickly to their 3-inch diameter forms in clusters on short stems.  Many petals have a central white streak and, in that way, the rose reminds me of a smaller 'William Baffin'.   Although described to have "mild fragrance" in the entry by helpmefind/roses, I detect no hint of fragrance in the flowers of my specimen.  My 'John Cabot' only bloomed once last year, in June, although it is said to have sporadic rebloom in late summer.  

A Hybrid Kordesii, 'John Cabot' ((Rosa kordesii Wulff x (Masquerade x Rosa laxa)) is said to be hardy to Zone 2B.   He certainly is solidly cane-hardy in winter here in Zone 5, with absolutely no dieback in the past two seasons. and has suffered no blackspot or mildew on his light green, matte foliage. He is also growing in a site where I lost the rambler 'America' to Rose Rosette Disease, but shows no signs of that monstrous disease yet.  At three years of age in my garden, the arching canes top out around 5 feet tall, and the rose has a tendency to grab whatever is passing by. 

In Hardy Roses, Robert Osborne stated that 'John Cabot' is "one of the most important new roses for northern gardens" and that he first saw it labeled as "seedling L07."  Released as a climber, I will prune and grow it as a shrub and try my best to keep it looking less "wild."  

If, as you read this blog entry, you feel that I'm not that fond of 'John Cabot', you are correct.  While I don't despise the rose, it has few exceptional qualities for me to favor.   It IS hardy, healthy, and needs little nurturing to provide a bounty of color in its season, however, so it has earned my attention in the garden, and, as you can see on the right photo taken just after sunrise last Friday, its jarring bright pink color makes it a standout even on a cloudy day.