Rain drops

'Maman Cochet'

'Chrysler Imperial'

'Madame Abel Chatenay'

'Le Vesuve'

'Quietness'

'Maman Cochet'

'Serratipetala'

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.

The Dirt Pile was closed

That’s my very local source for gravel, topsoil, mulch, bulk potting soil, etc. Apparently, they took the long weekend off, because they were locked up tight when I went there Saturday morning. I needed good soil for the beds under and around ‘Francois Juranville’. Oh, well, I could still dig the holes, so after a quick trip to Lowe’s for cement edging I got started. Just to save on confusion the pertinent writing is under each photo.


 I more precisely scraped the gravel out of the way and set up the edging for the dry-fit, so to speak. Not rocket science but as precise as I can make it for the perfectionist in me.


You remember how the gravel path ran under the rebar arbor that ‘Francois Juranville’ lives on and that he’s planted to the left in the sun here. The shade bed is behind the bench. Do you see the shade line on the ground? In winter the back garden which is on the north side of the house is almost totally in shade. That is the shadow of the gable end of the house about twenty-five feet away. The sun is at such a low angle – and getting lower every day – that much of the shade bed and all of ‘Mrs B R Cant’ to the far left out of frame are in full sun, and she’s just as happy as a clam and blooming her heart out. Curious, isn’t it, how this earth of ours tilts this way and that way with the only giveaway being the shadows we cast.


 ‘Serratipetala’ in the rectangular pot was dragged inches at a time out of the way. As I was dragging his butt inch by inch I thought about finding him a better home than the one he has which isn’t entirely my fault... the home, I mean. He was only supposed to be three feet tall but grew almost six feet tall. Must be the vitamins in the Florida sun. But for sentimental reasons I have decided to keep him. The cool weather has caused him to be much leafier plus I’m just tired of getting rid of all of my original roses. I liked me back then – all doe-eyed and excited and driven to have roses, roses, roses... before I knew that all roses, roses, roses didn’t love my garden. Just some roses, roses, roses. The trick was to find which ones.


 Mmmm, I like it.



Now on to the digging. The place where my shovel is laying is the designated dumping zone for the excavated crappy soil coming out of the new bed, some of which I put there when it was the designated dumping zone for the crappy soil from the front garden as shown in the photo below. The exciting part is that I decided that this area would be graveled, too, and would make a lovely shady sitting area... in the summer, that is.



Step back in time to November 28, 2008, and this was the back garden, receptacle for six inches by twenty feet by fifteen feet (give or take) of limey sand with definite cementitious characteristics that formerly was the front yard. One wheelbarrow at a time. See how excited I was… Gee, what’s that green stuff all over the yard? Can’t remember. By the way not a single rose in this photo – except ‘Serratipetala’ in the rectangular pot is still there.



Dang that tree!! I wanted it out of there by now, but tree cutters who don’t show up when they say they will seem to be in control of my future. DH with the arthritic back that needs surgery and I with no umph or climbing ability surveyed the situation Saturday after the digging was done. We determined that if we were downing this tree it would come down right where the tailgate of the truck is between the two trees. In fact, one or both of those other two trees could come down as well. The left one, unfortunately, would take with it the canopy that ‘Francois Juranville’ planned to grow into, so that would be disappointing. Maybe the right one could go first, and then we could reassess. It was all I could do (what magnificent self-control!) not to say, “Can’t we do it now, Daddy, huh, huh, huh???”, but given the waning daylight and the presence of DH’s cane, I figured I would refrain from totally blowing every shred of my credibility in one fell swoop. I know DH expected me to blow it. However, neither of us showed our hands in this little game of ‘who’s not the mature one?’



 A wider view of the mess.

Here you can clearly see the stratification of the neo-paleolithic era created in the upheaval of three years ago along with the roots of that dang tree. I can’t decide if I want to put ‘Rose de Rescht’ here. May be too much sun in summer for his delicate dark red blooms, so I think he’ll stay in his pot and let daylilies live here. The dark layer of native soil underneath my sand isn’t really as fertile as it looks. It’s basically dark brown and sometimes black compacted something that resembles mortar mix and contains white limestone rocks. I am proud to say that I made the black friable layer of dirt on top which I’m thinking, i.e., hoping is much thicker in the middle of that bed. By the way the edging is laid over because I kept catching, er, slamming the shovel on them. Digging is a game of inches especially for klutzy people.

I do hope you’re finding these holes dug in the ground quite interesting! Otherwise, what’s the point of blogging about them except that I was knee-deep in sand and lived to tell about it.


Don’t you think a birdbath would be great on the gravel side of that curve? You won’t believe what I found at Lowe’s when I was getting the cement edging. Animal, vegetable or mineral, you ask. Well, of course, vegetable. A white hydrangea macrophylla. Alright, I’ll go outside… in the dark… and look at the label… with a flashlight. Be right back. It’s ‘Sister Therese’. Very beautiful pure white blooms. It will be going in this bed and will be surrounded by daylilies. The other vegetable was a burnt orange asiatic lily. The cashier says they “come back”, meaning live to bloom next year. I really hope she knows what she’s talking about since I heard they don’t.  But it’s loaded with flower buds so this year at least it will put on a show.



Notice something different?

Yes, I remembered to extend the half-inch poly and bury it before construction was finished. Too soon old, too late smart. Also, the present ugliness of the gravel paths will be remedied with a hard spray from the hose and a thin layer of new gravel. Aren't you glad? I sure am.
 

That was yesterday.

Today I took ‘Polonaise’ out of his blue patio pot and put him in the ground next to SdlM. No photos again since it was dark again. I also took ‘Baronne Prevost’ out of that spot in the ground and put her in the blue pot but not on the patio. Just like moving the furniture around. It’s been there a year… gotta move it.

I also redid my rose list today. The one I use to keep me sane, not the one on the blog. My personal list has crucial information on it like when I got the rose, where I got it from and where it is in the garden. It hadn’t been updated in quite a while as evidenced by the many cross-outs and penciled-in items. Getting that done got my brain in order to do the critical thinking required for determining which roses needed to be moved and where to, where the unplanted ones would be planted, which ones had to leave and where would they go. I’m happy to say that none will go to the city compost pile. All six will go to Rose Petals Nursery. Follow the link and you can read about ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison, Climbing’ and her relocation to her new home. See, all’s well that ends well.