Maria Stern Mopes

Among the roses I grow is one of those beautiful and elegant roses that also somehow remind you of a slow-motion nightmare.  You know what I mean; you're having a beautiful dream and then suddenly it all turns bad, in slow-motion you see the car crash or the long fall coming and you try to stop it but you just can't?  Well, that's how I feel about 'Maria Stern'.

'Maria Stern' is an orange blend Hybrid Tea bred by the Brownell family in 1969.  The blooms are admittedly, fantastically-colored, double, and non-fading, but typical of many of the '60's Hybrid Teas, that's about all I can find to recommend her.  She is one of the "Sub-Zero Roses" of the Brownell clan, bred to survive tough winters, but I'd give her a "D+" for vigor.  The bush under the strongly fragrant flowers is nothing special to see.  My 'Maria Stern' is a little over a year old and stands about 2 feet tall, with only two decent canes.  Several other roses planted at the same time, most of them Griffith Buck roses, are a foot taller and much broader and healthier.  'Maria Stern' has moderate blackspot resistance but by this time of the year, her legs are starkly bare and her hair is thinning as well.  A cross of 'Tip Toes' (another Sub-Zero rose) and 'Queen Elizabeth', she certainly isn't living up to her pedigree.  'Maria Stern' is supposed to grow to 4 feet tall and be hardy to Zone 4B.  The only recommendation I can find for it is that it was the Twin Cities Rose Club's Rose of the Month in March, 2010.

I absolutely love the color of this rose, I really do, but, alas, I feel that she is trying her best to slip away into the dark abyss on me.  This is my second 'Maria Stern'.  The first loss I attributed to being a decrepit bagged and budded rose, but this time she's on her own roots and still isn't thriving.  I planted her last year, almost lost her again right away,  protected her against all ill weather, and pampered the heck of of her this year, but no matter how many chocolates and wine coolers I bring her, she just sulks.  Maybe next year, if she makes it through winter, she'll finally find her way to shine.

Spider 1, Mrs. ProfessorRoush 0

For those who were rooting for the spider outside Mrs. ProfessorRoush's kitchen window, I thought I'd take this occasion to ease your fears.  Several hints and eventual outright demands last week for spidercidal action by the gardener of this marital unit went unheeded as I feigned deafness.  As a side note to other non-gardening spouses, be advised that there are times when accusing your spouse of being "increasingly hard of hearing" can backfire on you.  I fully agree with Mrs. ProfessorRoush, in fact, that I find it ever more difficult to hear suggestions for chores that I have no desire to accomplish. 

Outside looking in

After a few days of procrastination by her noncompliant and reticent husband, Mrs. ProfessorRoush took broom in hand and wiped the offending speck from the outside of her window in a merciless surprise attack.  I mourned the poor little guy briefly, but then went about readying the rest of the garden for Fall.  Just two days later, however, there it was one morning, the web restored to its former architectural disarray, and the spider back, calmly sitting in the middle of my spouse's long-distance view.  As an old and wise gardener would be advised to do, I carefully concealed my pleasure and quickly set about to ensconce the household brooms.

The view from the inside

You've got to give this spider some props for both persistence and pure gall.  When a wild-eyed, flailing monster wipes out your home and food supply in a fit of irrational fear, not all of us would have the will to rebuild, let alone right back in the face of the enemy. I've also got to give him some credit for his choice of venue.  His web design is haphazard, but that kitchen window web is protected from North and West winds, shaded from the hot sun, takes advantage of radiated heat from the brick behind it, and it sits right over the barbecue grill, a prime source for luring food to the web.  Talk about prime real estate!

I will attempt to remain, like Switzerland, a neutral and aloof observer, bemused at the struggle of life and death taking place in my very home, but I sense that I will yet be drawn into the conflict on the side of the aggressor.  A gardener is ever reminded what side his bread is buttered on and we have a particularly uncomfortable spare bed upstairs.  Although I still fear for this individual spider, I fear not for the future of his race however, because I know that somewhere out in the garden, others, who have chosen safer and prettier homes for the time being, are biding their time and making plans for window domination.

A Better Side

'El Catala'

Wow, the onset of Fall surely changes our gardens, doesn't it?  It also sometimes makes me reassess my evaluation criteria and reevaluate my favorites.  Then again, perhaps my favorites don't change, but it is now, in the cooler temperatures, that I realize that all roses, just like humans, have their good and bad moments.  Sometimes they are a balled-up, crinkly mess, and sometimes, they just shine.  You just have to find the best conditions to develop each one, human or rose.

'El Catala'

Take, for example 'El Catala'.  I haven't been crazy about the performance I've gotten out of this rose all summer, but right now, in the cool days and cold nights, it is the star of its bed. I was wrong about him, wasn't I?  Take a look at this bicolored floral hunk to the left and above.  Completely scrumptious right now,  isn't he?

'Charlotte Brownell'

And look at how the colder temperatures bring out the blush in the cheeks of 'Charlotte Brownell'.  Amazing, isn't it, how a girl can be blushing and brazen at the same time?



'Freckles'

Just as the sun brings out the freckles in a young girls face, the claret markings of 'Freckles' are always enhanced by a little cold weather as well.  I'm learning that Griffith Buck had a number of these subtly streaked roses and I'm trying to grow a few more right now.

'Garden Party'

If I wasn't expecting a garden party after the heat of summer, 'Garden Party' is set on proving me wrong.  My 'Garden Party' struggles and struggles, a common affliction for many modern hybrid teas in this area, but coming out of summer, she's putting out these creamy white, perfect blossoms by the handful every day.



When I talk about favorites, though, there's always one rose whose beauty is never outdone; the everlasting 'Queen Elizabeth'.  When I want a picture of a perfect bud form, I can always count on the Queen to come through for me.

But then, as I pointed out, there is always 'Hope for Humanity', isn't there?  I can't imagine a more perfect cluster of dark red blooms, each vibrating deeply with life and hope.

 

'Hope for Humanity'

I've got quite a colorful landscape right now, this perfect time of early Fall, but sadly it all ends tonight.  I've watched the forecast all week, starting at a prediction of 32F tonight when I first looked, and then dropping steadily each time I checked it.  This morning, the prediction is for 25F tonight, so I know that I'm going to see a hard freeze and my garden is over.  I'm ready for it, though, the baby roses are all tucked into cloches and the grass has been mowed for the final time.  But I'm also not ready for it.  There are hundreds of beautiful roses like these right now and I'm trying to get half of Manhattan to come by and cut some today.  Somebody might as well benefit from a few more moments of beauty.

Garden Literature Goes To Pot

Dear friends, just as there is no hiding the fact that ProfessorRoush is a rose nut, there is also no suspense to the revelation that I am an entrenched bibliophile.  My love of printed and bound material stretches far back into my childhood, to that happy time when I was still an "only" child and had to find ways to occupy myself.  While burdened now with middle-age, a sister, a wife, and children, I continue to feel comforted with the feel of paper and printed letters, the smell of new ink and glue.  I aspire to become the last person on the planet to purchase a Kindle or Nook.

My long worship of books and growing interest in gardening has, for the past twenty years or so, connected in that genre we know as garden literature, in the words of Penelope Hobhouse and Christopher Lloyd and Lauren Springer-Ogden.  I have discovered natural gardening with Sara Stein, delighted in the philosophical ramblings of Michael Pollan, grown old with Sydney Eddison and grumbled with Henry Mitchell.  I've plotted spousal demise with Amy Stewart and searched for old roses with Thomas Christopher. 

All that, I fear, is disappearing.  Literally, it seems to be going to pot.  Marijuana.  Mary Jane, reefer, and cannabis.  Call it what you want, I was shocked, visiting a large national book chain, to realize that what was previously eight shelves of fascinating garden literature is now four shelves, two of them composed entirely of books about growing, marketing, or self-medicating with marijuana.  I counted 87 different books on pot cultivation, with such imaginative titles as Marijuana 101, Organic Marijuana, Everything Marijuana, and the Marijuana Garden Saver.  The Big Book of Buds is not about roses, much to my chagrin.  Only one even looked mildly interesting to me, Super Charged; How Outlaws, Hippies and Scientists Reinvented Marijuana, probably because it was more science and history-oriented rather than a how-to-grow-to-get-high-at-home manual.  I didn't buy it for fear someone might see it laying around our home.

Can the drive for all these new books about marijuana really be sales-based?  I don't see these on the bookshelves of friends, sitting on tables of garage sales, or promoted in bestseller lists.  Perhaps the gray-haired members of my daylily club are only pretending to grow hemerocallis in my presence, but pass the potato bong when I'm not around.  Somehow, somewhere, are the same clueless editors and booksellers just surmising that these are what the public wants?  The same editors that contract good writers to produce lame and repetitious books of landscaping dumbed down for the homeowner, or to write the 200th tome cautioning against over-watering houseplants (which currently comprise the other two gardening shelves in the store)?  Would Scotts, Bayer, and other companies grow richer if they forgot about lawn care and rose chemicals and concentrated their marketing on hydroponic fertilizer and gro-lamps aimed to entice that little extra buzz out of hemp?

Don't answer that last question. It was rhetorical, not a suggestion for improvement.

I'm asking instead that all gardeners, from the lowliest bean planters to topiary artists extraordinaire, all of us vote with our pocketbooks.  Buy works authored by Mirabel Osler and Beverley Nichols and Helen Dillon and Henry Mitchell.  Read about the gardens of others, old and new, green and growing, famous or banal.  Become a fan of organic gardening, water gardening or prairie gardening.  Shun the Siren call of cannabis and read to garden for flowers and food!