Showoffs!

'Carefree Spirit'

The last few roses to bloom for me are streaking into full display right now, so I thought I would take a few moments this morning to look through this year's pictures and identify those roses that I think really made a spectacle of themselves this year.  Not those roses that just bloomed well and often, but roses who literally bloomed so freely that you "couldn't stick a finger into them without hitting a bloom."  There were several of those, and it also struck me that most of the overachievers are also peaking right now, later blooming than most of their cousins.

'Carefree Spirit' is a relative youngster, in its 2nd full summer for me, but already it is living up to its promises. Carefree blooming and with a willing spirit, those are traits we all love in a rose.






The biggest overachiever in my garden may be my miniature climber 'Red Cascade'.  I took this picture this morning and its quality suffers as the eastern sunrise gives it an unnatural orange tint, but take a gander at a rose that is very well-named; a waterfall of bright red flowing over the limestone blocks.



'Red Cascade'

'Ballerina'

Hybrid musk 'Ballerina' is a timeless rose and provides me a more pastel-colored vision to salve the burns on my cornea, but she is still blooming like a champ right now.

'Jeanne Lavoie'

It is not so unusual for classy blooming miniature  'Jeanne Lavoie' to have a first bloom as flush as this one, but once again, she proves that she is a beautiful lass and a workhorse in the garden.  Five feet tall and growing, she should top that trellis by next year.

'American Pillar'

I always look to rambler 'American Pillar' to finish out the show for the first bloom cycle, and again this year, it isn't disappointing me.  This picture, taken this morning, reflects the fact that I didn't properly trim it and tie it up this year, but, regardless, this monster of a rose certainly has its ostentatious side.

'Hunter'

Among the more double-flowered and larger-flowered roses, I have to give special recognition here to red 'Hunter' on the right and bright pink 'Morden Centennial' below, both of which are now fading.  'Hunter' stands proudly among the young Monarda seedlings in the picture, and 'Morden Centennial' is now far past bloom, but they bloomed their heads off in their own times just to make me happy.  Both are always dependable roses for me but their early exhibition this year was more spectacular than I remember ever seeing either of them.  Thank you, girls, for adding a special splash to my rose season!  

'Morden Centennial'

As I scroll through my photos, there were many other well-blooming roses this year, the expected visual bounty from roses such as 'Champlaign' and 'Chuckles' and others, but the roses above were the cream of the crop in my rose parade.  What roses outdid their usual beauty for you this year?  What roses were your showoffs this year?

Snakes Ahoy!

One never knows, do we?  Last Friday started out as a normal day, but it certainly ended with a bang.  After my workday, Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I slipped away for a bite to eat, and then she went on home to walk our ancient Brittany Spaniel while I stopped back to check on a resident doing a surgery. 

I can testify that Mrs. ProfessorRoush was entirely normal when we parted, but twenty minutes later when I pulled into the garage, I was met at the door to my car with a disheveled, shouting caricature of my wife and a very excited Brittany.   At least I think it was my wife for she was moving so quickly her outline was blurry.  It seems that on their walk, they had encountered the first of this summer's snake denizens.  

Scotophis obsoletus, Western Rat Snake

As I listened and tried to calm Mrs. ProfessorRoush, all the while wondering if the garage and car windows were going to shatter from either decibel level or pitch, I understood clearly what detectives and FBI agents are up against when they discuss the unreliability of eyewitnesses.  If I had taken Mrs. ProfessorRoush's account as gospel, this particular snake had coiled up to a height approaching ten feet, threatened to strike at my Brittany with bared fangs, and then chased them out of the yard. 

I know that I've led many of the readers of this blog to believe that I'm also scared of snakes, but that is not entirely true.  Yes, I don't care to have them pop up at my feet or strike at my shovel from underneath a perennial I'm transplanting, but my panic episodes at such times are temporary and only rarely results these days in running clear past township or county borders.  I have been so desensitized by the number of reptiles on the Kansas Flint Hills that I certainly still jump, but then I calm down while I'm waiting for gravity to reacquaint the earth with my feet, and I rationally determine the type of snake and the relative danger to my garden visitors (pet or human).

This particular snake was (is) about a six foot long and 2 inch diameter Western Rat Snake, Scotophis obsoletus (or is it Elaphe obsoletus? Or Pantherophis obsoletus?), and it is a constrictor, not a biter.   I did not, as counseled by Mrs. ProfessorRoush, "get a shotgun and blow it to smithereens."  I have a strict species-ism hierarchy in my garden, hating rodents more than snakes, so I welcome any of the latter benign hunters.  Additionally, I have yet to see a poisonous snake in my garden and I have theorized that if a nice, big rat snake is clearing out the hunting grounds, I have less chance of hearing a rattle next to my feet as I trim the roses.  A snake this big will also occasionally catch and give a rabbit a love hug, so this guy may even help me to raise some lettuce this year.  Besides, according to my references, the Western Rat Snake has a home range of approximately 30 acres, so I'm not very likely to see him again soon.

All of the proceeding thoughts weave a nice rationalization, but it doesn't wash at all with Mrs. ProfessorRoush, who prefers all slithering insects and reptiles to be in the process of decay.  Not even the chance for fresh lettuce can dissuade her, and I now have some work to do to restore my gardening knight in shining armor image at home.  C'est la vie.   

Chuckles for Joy

'Chuckles'

I've been wrong, wrong, wrong.  Wrong about the garden worth of 'Chuckles', wrong about the breeder, and wrong about just about everything to do with this rose.  Grown on me, it has, and become one of the stars of my garden.

I believed for the longest time, right up until I began to research the rose for this blog entry, that Chuckles was a Griffith Buck-bred rose.  But it isn't a Griffith Buck rose, 'Chuckles' was, according to www.helpmefind.com, bred by Roy Shepherd in 1958.  How did I get it so wrong?  In this case, there is a perfectly simple explanation.  I swear that I'm innocent, Your Honor.  I purchased my 'Chuckles' from www.heirloomroses.com, where it is listed as a Griffith Buck rose.  It is not, however, listed as a Buck rose on Iowa State University's website or anyplace else.  Heirloom just has it wrong.  'Chuckles' was bred from a seed parent cross between 'Jean Lafitte' and 'New Dawn', and the pollen parent was 'Orange Triumph'.

She's also not a shrub rose, as I previously thought, she is classified as a Floribunda.  I can see that now, the profuse bloom and intense garden presence of the bush. 'Chuckles' is a continuous bloomer in my garden, rarely without a few eye-catching blossoms.

What I haven't been wrong on are all the parts that are dependent only on my eyes.  'Chuckles' is a low growing rose, about 3-4 foot tall at maturity in my garden, and almost 6 feet in diameter. The blooms are mostly single with 4 petals, but they are large in diameter, almost 4 inches across. The blooms are an eye-searing hot pink, a color that I did not like initially, but one that I've developed a taste for.  Each bloom also has a bit of white at the center, and they come in clusters, with new blooms, older blooms, and buds all visible in the same cluster as you can see in the picture above.  Stamens are golden on new blooms but fade quickly to brown.  There is little to no fragrance to the rose, but, then, nobody's perfect.  The bush is perfectly hardy here, in 5A/6B, and it is probably hardy far to the north since I saw it listed on a website named "LandscapeAlaska".  I never spray her for blackspot or other fungal diseases.  Look at that perfect foliage above;  glossy, dark green, and unspotted.  She's at peak right now in my garden, and has come into her own in this, her 6th year in my garden.

Most importantly of all, 'Chuckles' is one of the most aptly named roses of rosedom.  Anyone in her presence can't help but be cheered up by a single look of those bountiful bright pink and white blooms.  If I were to design a garden for a depressed friend, 'Chuckles' would be a necessity.  Heck, all of us could use one or two 'Chuckles' in the garden to cheer us up from time to time.

Allegra

Hybrid Gallica 'Allegra'

Of the several Paul Barden-bred hybrid Gallicas that are entering their second full summer in my garden, I believe that pink 'Allegra' has my vote for newcomer of the year.  She's at full bloom, right now, and I'm quite impressed by the durability of the blooms in the Kansas wind and sun.

'Allegra' (ARDjoy) was bred by Paul Barden in 2000 and introduced, according to "helpmefind" by The Uncommon Rose in 2004.  I find the bloom of 'Allegra' reminiscent of the superb 1816 Alba 'Konigin von Danemark', with a similar shade of pink and the same neat button-eyed and quartered appearance, but much larger bloom size and with a better fragrance.  'Allegra's very double blooms are every bit of 4 inches in diameter and it has an incredibly strong Gallica scent to my nose, among the strongest of rose fragrances in my garden, right now second perhaps only to 'Madame Hardy' and 'Madame Issac Pierre'.  In its second year of age, it is 2.5 feet high and around, and I expect it will reach its advertised mature height of 4 to 6 feet easily. It was fully hardy last year in my garden and has no blackspot or mildew presently visible.  Look closely at the clean foliage in the pictures if you don't believe me.

A few more blossoms of 'Allegra'

Many of my garden roses were affected by the recent cold and damp nights and left with discolored, pale, or balled-up blossoms, but impressively, 'Allegra' seems immune to the weather and has provided me with a number of perfect blossoms.  According to Paul Barden's website, I can expect four to six weeks of bloom with flowers opening sequentially on inflorescences, so a long bloom phase is yet another positive note for 'Allegra'  Paul also hinted that this rose doesn't hit its stride until it is several years old, so I can only imagine the beauty to come next year.  A cross of Gallica 'Duchesse de Montebello' and St. Swithun (a pink David Austin/English rose), 'Allegra' reportedly does not sucker like it's Gallica ancestors and for that, I'm thankful because I grow tired of rooting out Gallica suckers in my rose beds.

I'm always interested in the origin of the name of a rose and 'Allegra' is an excellent example of why the written notes of rose breeders are so often a treasure.  I speculated, from knowledge buried deep with my musical training, that 'Allegra' would denote a rose that bloomed or grew, as the dictionary indicates, "with a light and lively tempo", but Paul Barden's website notes that he named the rose "to honor a dear friend of mine who fell in love with this rose when she first saw it."  And thus, a rose was named.
'