Jeri Jennings

Jeri Jennings

The Rose, more than any other flower, has been associated throughout history with people, common peasants, characters and aristocrats alike.  The names of many, many varieties reflect their time and their heritage, echoing important historical figures, wealthy benefactors, lovers, and rosarians.  One such rose however, of more modern heritage, is named after a prominent current rosarian; 'Jeri Jennings'.

'Jeri Jennings' (or ARDjeri), the rose, is a 2007 release from the breeding program of Paul Barden.  She is a Hybrid Musk of esquisite golden-yellow color, as you can see at the top, heavy gold in the center with the outer edges fading to golden-pink, and she is cluster-flowered with individual flowers just shy of 2 inches across. The fragrance of 'Jeri Jennings' is intense, with aftertones of her musky origins and the blooms drop cleanly at the end of their time.  She's in her second summer in my garden now, about 2.5 feet tall, and I have little doubt she'll reach her predicted height of between 4-7 feet.  Her canes are supple and sprawl a bit, so it looks like the bush will be wider than she is tall at maturity.  Those sprawling canes are of great benefit, as they seem to promote flowering all along their length.  Both flushes that have occurred thus far in my garden this summer have been lush with color  (a sun-bleached picture of the second recent flush is pictured at the left).   A cross of  miniature 'Joycie' and a 1904 Lambert Hybrid musk named 'Trier', 'Jeri Jennings' is labeled as being hardy to 6A and has survived nicely in my mid-Continental clime.  Paul Barden describes her on helpmefind.com as "possibly the best rose I have bred, to date."

I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Jeri Jennings, the person, but I know of her passion for rescuing lost roses, and of her writing (she has two chapters in The Sustainable Rose Garden, printed by Newberry Books in 2010), and I know that she is a still-active rosarian, with excellent advice about roses and gardening, who participates in the Antique Rose forum on gardenweb.com.   One of the chapters by Jeri Jennings in the aforementioned book is "Secret Garden Musk Climber", so I can't imagine a better tribute for a lovely rosarian. 

I've seen one drawback to 'Jeri Jennings' here in Kansas.  Last year, as a very young rose, she had a little bit of blackspot, but this year she's had a full-blown outbreak, losing about 70% of her leaves at one point near the first bloom cycle, although you can see from the picture that she has rebounded nicely.  I think she likes the heat better and a little spraying didn't hurt.  Given the severity of the first outbreak, though, I think this is a rose who will become a sentinel for fungal disease in my garden, signaling the occasion to spray my few remaining Hybrid Teas and other susceptible roses.  I seem to have the same problem with 'Golden Celebration' an English rose of similar hue, the only two roses in my garden with that golden-yellow color and two of the three most likely to show blackspot early (Morden Blush is the third), so perhaps the Kansas environment is still just resentful of all the Forty-niners a century ago, greedy men who crossed this dry prairie at a hard sprint and left it behind for the rich California coast.

(P.S.; Jeri Jennings, the rose, is not very thorny;  small, insignificant prickles).

Unconditional Love

'Unconditional Love'

I have a new youngster in my garden, just a toddler starting to stretch out, and I swear, here, in front of witnesses, to give it 'Unconditional Love' forevermore.  I came across this 2003 introduction (registered as ARDwesternstar) while looking for Paul Barden roses on Rogue Valley's website and, unable to resist a bright red rose, I ordered and planted it this Spring.  'Unconditional Love' is a miniature Moss rose, and it has nice mossy buds to prove it. The first bloom flush, from a rose only a foot tall, was quite spectacular as you can see at the right.  Blooms are small, but very bright red and very double, and the color holds until the blooms drop free.  She's supposed to only grow two feet tall, so I have her placed in a prominent spot front and center of a new bed where she can return my adoration with blooming abandon.   I'll write more about her next year as she comes into adolescence.

(The "thistle" at the lower left, for those who are wondering, is a white prickly poppy, Argemone polyanthemos, that I have successfully gotten to grow from seed in this bed.  I'm trying to get them started self-seeding, so the prickly poppy and 'Unconditional Love' will just have to snuggle up together and get alone this summer).     

Daylily Drifting

'Night Embers' ?

As a gardener, one either seems to "get" daylilies, or one doesn't.   I've never been a rabid daylily fan myself, but their utility in a Kansas garden is such that most who garden in the Flint Hills will inevitably turn to daylilies as a way to fill border gaps with a minimum of fuss.

The real beauty of daylilies, however, is the versatility of their form and color and in the way my favorites change year to year.  Every time that I'm about ready to stop growing a particular color or form of daylily, when yet one more another look at a brassy orange or a muddy red ruffled flower leaves me near screaming, another season rolls around and I cease and desist in my extermination plans.  I sudddenly find the ugly ducklings are now the beautiful swans, and the daylilies that I liked last year are just not quite as appealing.

'Little Grapette'

I've drifted through love-hate phases that are likely common to many Hemerocallis growers.  The "hate the oranges and apricots" phase.  The "hmmm, the oranges look pretty fabulous this year" phase.  The "I'm wild about spider daylilies" phase.  The "subtle pinks and corals turn me on" phase.   The "eyed daylilies are the cats meow" phase. The "anything but Stella de Oro" phase.

This year, a poor year for daylilies in the dry Flint Hills, I'm in a "dark red and purple" phase.  Where 'Beautiful Edging' seems to have failed me, and where "Kwanso" is leaving me a little bit uneasy, the dark daylilies are standing out in sulky splendor.  'Little Grapette' is really purple, for once.  'Prairie Blue Eyes' is full of deep almost blue hues it has lacked in other years.  The dark reds are not quite black, but are certainly drawing me deeper into their mysteries than ever before. All this yet another example of nothing under God's creation lacking value.

So, just as a piece of advice from ProfessorRoush to reader, never turn down an offered daylily, no matter the color or form.  You may hate that brassy orange this year.  You may detest the short, stature and light yellow of 'Happy Returns'.  Apricot daylilies may leave you sick to your stomach, and purples with yellow throats may appear clownish in your garden this July.  But someday in the future, every daylily will have its moment in the sun, and you'll be glad they're still a part of your garden. I'm glad this year that the purples are here and I wish, once again this year, the oranges and 'Stella De Oro'  would die.  I can't just spade-prune the oranges, you understand, because Mrs. ProfessorRoush isn't as fickle in her daylily tastes and the oranges are her favorite every year.  When she wants me to plant more of them this year, I plan to smile, nod, buy more purples, and lie.

Striking Serendipity

A second blessed event 0f RAIN (!) occurred Wednesday night.  Short-lived, but a nice little downpour of a little over an hour yielded 2.6 inches of rain.  We may even be wetting the subsoil now!

I had just recovered from a day of clinics, eaten supper, perused the paper, and watched the evening talkies, when I realized that a decent storm front had assembled and was about 20 miles northwest of Manhattan, bearing down on us.  I've been waiting weeks for this opportunity, and, seizing the moment, I quickly donned garden shoes and ran out to spread a bag of alfalfa pellets on as many roses as I could.  I always like to spread the pellets just before a rain so they'll "uncompress", mold a bit, and be a little less likely to draw rabbits and rodents to the base of my roses. 

Now this is what I call lucky!

 After emptying the alfalfa bag, I grabbed my camera and went out to take a few pictures of the developing storm front.  And then, by a "stroke" of luck, I snapped the photo of lightning shown above.  The camera was hand-held and looking straight west, past my neighbor's mirthful sign and over his pasture to the western ridge.  Gorgeous, isn't it? And better yet if you could see it in the non-compressed form.  I've hoped for years to snap such a picture and here it is, mostly focused, straight, and as good as I could hope for.  God, in action, right on the Kansas prairie.

The rock sign, in case you're wondering, is at the entrance to my neighbor's property a few hundred feet to the west of my house, and it carries a slightly altered quotation from "Paint Your Wagon", both the name of a 1951 musical and the 1969 motion picture (Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood) inspired by it. The hit song of the musical and movie was They Call the Wind Maria, with "Maria" pronounced "Ma-rye-ah."  My neighbor, as you can guess, is a little bit of a character to love such a haunting song that he had a rock engraved with it.  I surmise that he didn't know the correct spelling of the song title, but then neither did Mariah Carey's parents, who, according to omniscient Wikipedia, named Ms. Carey after the song.

The actual lyrics are:

Away out here they got a name
For rain and wind and fire
The rain is Tess, the fire Joe,
And they call the wind Maria

This picture was taken looking due north from the front of my house, as the storm came in.