All my children

…and can I remember all their names?

'Absolute Treasure'

'Marietta Dreamer'

'Crimson Pirate' - Not positive since I didn't save the name on the Sam's box but pretty sure of the ID

'Elizabeth Ferguson' - very large flower and tall

'Mary Guthrie'

'Quietness'

'Sherry Lane Carr'

'White Pet'

'White Pet'

I have no clue.

'Byzantine Emperor'

Dahlia 'Lucca Johanna' - Walmart came through beautifully on this one.

'Madame Abel Chatenay'

'Madame Abel Chatenay'

'Chrysler Imperial'

'Chrysler Imperial'

'All American Magic'

Clematis 'Princess Diana' unless I have them mixed up and it's 'Duchess of Albany'.

'Souvenir de la Malmaison'

'Sherry Lane Carr'

'Anda'

Salvia farinacea

'White Pet' - one huge cluster

''Faces Of A Clown' - first flowers often aren't perfect, missing a sepal.

'Lucca Johanna'

'Madame Abel Chatenay' - Her fading flowers remind me of a Victorian lady's flouncy dressing gown. What else would an 1894 rose look like?

'Madame Abel Chatenay'

Coreopsis

'Hermosa'

Echinacea aka Purple Coneflower

'Souvenir de la Malmaison'

'Quietness'

'Caribbean Perfection Plus' described as canary yellow. Glow-in-the-dark yellow is more like it. More glowing than this photo.

The rose fairy came today. A baby 'Rosette Delizy' was delivered in person by the lovely Cydney Wade of Rose Petals Nursery. I'm very excited to have the beautiful 'Rosette Delizy' back in my garden. She'll go into a 2-gallon pot and be planted next spring. Many, many cuttings of 'Mme Abel Chatenay' and 'Capitaine Dyel de Graville' were taken back to the nursery. Wait for them.

'Gruss an Teplitz' in a 3-gallon pot also arrived today with 3 buds. Can't wait to see and smell them.

I'll break the bad news first. 'Bermuda's Anna Olivier' didn't make it. She probably would have though had it not been for the murderous squirrels. Unbelievably, the day after my post about her all of the tiny new upper growth was gone, and the three basal breaks were chewed off. As more new canes sprouted, they were chewed off to nothing. I finally gave up hope and pulled her out. I could not bear to see her tortured. She had a handful of short roots and without the squirrels perhaps she could have made it. The good news is that this little baby is 'Bermuda's Anna Olivier'. She'll also be potted on to a 2-gallon pot for planting next spring. In the meantime Salvia farinacea fills the void.

Clematis 'Venosa Violacea', a viticella

The back garden just before dusk.

'Absolute Treasure' in the evening light looking unlike herself in the first photo above but still beautiful.

Spring continues to unfold

‘Serratipetala’ is a Found China Rose, discovered in France in 1912. Its flowers are so petite – an inch and a half across. The petals are serrated, and the blooms have a flat form that darken with age. What that means is that when I went back the next day, this flower was crimson with touches of pink. To me, it’s an incredibly interesting rose. Also incredible is the fact that it grows larger than both HMF and Vintage Gardens report. Mine is growing in a pot and not a large one, because I thought it would be a diminutive, three-feet tall rose bush. I’ve been thinking of putting ‘Serratipetala’ in the ground, but every place I consider may not be big enough. After all, if it grows to a 5x5 bush in a pot, what will it do with the blank check offered by good old terra firma? Another gardening unknown to wrestle with.



Seemingly bunches of daylilies are sporting flower buds. Oh, be still my heart. Some of them are newcomers, and I don’t even know what I’m getting excited about because I have forgotten who they are without my cheat-sheet. It’s simply hard for me to believe that spring is on the move.





‘Mrs. B R Cant’ is beautiful again. She’s not a typical delicate Tea Rose but a sturdy, robust one. Even her fragrance is strong. She has tough, pretty much disease-proof foliage, too. Beauty and brawn.




‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ has many buds and some flowers, too. This cluster was rather breathtaking to me.



A couple of days ago ‘Polonaise’ was looking like this. This evening there were two gorgeous open blooms. I went running in the house but not for the camera. I wanted DH to see these red roses. With long face and mumbled protests he came out…and enjoyed himself and the garden and the swing and the lovely cool evening in the shade of the oak tree. Some things are worth the effort. And that’s my long excuse for not having a photo of Polonaise’s first blooms.



The two big fat buds one over the other in the lower half of this photo were gloriously open today. I would suggest that you use your imagination, but you can’t even come close.



‘Richard’s Rose’ is a tiny, little bug-eaten thing, but he has a couple of new shoots and is putting up a good fight. I think I see evidence of a squirrel attack. I also think I should put up a defense perimeter around the little guy.



Right next to ‘Richard’s Rose’ is the bare-root “Pink Hollyhock” from Walmart. The other one I planted didn’t come up. I hope this is ‘Summer Carnival’ since other cultivars don’t stand much chance in Florida. This one looks like the Summer Carnivals that I’ve grown – so far.



A bud of ‘Marchesa Boccella'. I guess my hard pruning didn’t hurt her, and since she’s looking fairly bushy, I guess maybe it worked out okay. You can see her whole self in her purple pot below.




Here’s a volunteer from last year’s seed project whose name I can not remember. I think I have more in the front garden. How fitting! SDLM and Polonaise now occupy a red, white and blue bed. Well, in the heat of summer SDLM will be off-white anyway.



Now she’s gorgeous pale ‘baby pink’.



This ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ is now six feet wide, fitting from edge to edge in this bed, but she’s only about three feet tall and hardly thorny at all.



I’m really pleased with this ‘remodeled’ bed. You are free to use as much imagination as you need to picture Richard’s Rose, the hollyhocks and coreopsis, and the daylilies and purple coneflowers – in a few years – filling in between ‘Louis Philippe’ on the left and ‘Arcadia Louisiana Tea’ on the right. Packed in like sardines, aren’t they?


Referring to my cheat-sheet, this one is ‘Seductor’. Won’t be long. I’m going to try to count buds this year on the daylilies. I’m not really as compulsive as that may sound, merely curious.



‘Maman Cochet’ has a rather imperfect bud, perhaps from thrips. They’re baaaacck !! Crap-ola!



‘Maman Cochet’ (on the left) is looking much fuller already now that her new canes in the middle are taller. These bushes (‘General Schablikine’ is on the right) are about five and half feet tall, and this portion of the bed is about ten feet wide.



Here’s a close-up of the young canes in the upper left quadrant of ‘Maman Cochet’, showing flower buds already. When these flowers are spent, these canes will sprout new shoots from about two inches below these buds at the abscission point, and the rose will get taller in this way and make more flowers again at the ends of all that new growth. By the way, Maman is French for mother/mama. Monsieur Cochet was the breeder of this rose.



‘Maman Cochet’ is a huskier Tea Rose than ‘General Schablikine’ who has already had one basal break chewed off by an %^$## squirrel. These roses are three and a half years old, planted in September, 2008 and still quite juvenile in their maturity. The General definitely needs more basal breaks…and some barbed wire.



‘Maman Cochet’ is apparently an earlier bloomer than ‘General Schablikine’. Some Tea Roses definitely wait for hotter temps to start their blooming. Of course, YMMV.  he-he. Now that I know what that abbreviation means, it makes me chuckle. Your mileage may vary. Hmmm, garden mileage. It is rather variable, isn’t it? And I feel like some of us (moi?) have garden mileage envy. In reality, fast or slow our gardens should be accepted unconditionally and not judged against others. Gardens should be green…not gardeners.