Gardening tip of the day

You'll be a happier gardener if you do the dishes first.
Of course, I'm not sure what the male equivalent would be, but I am sure the guys can think of one.

The lovely and reliable 'White Maman Cochet', tea rose.

 

A new Echinacea 'Purple Coneflower' bud about to grace the garden. Please note today's date. Still blooming.

 

Volunteers are always welcome. This one is Vinca Periwinkle. Hmm, you didn't think I was referring to a human, did you?

A bunch of cheery Echinacea flowers. This one's a hybrid, I think, but can't tell you which one.

Just so you know that I have a handle on my day, dinner is already planned. Thaw-and-eat General Tso's Chicken. Thank goodness for microwaves!

Happy gardening!!

Have you heard?

Sometimes I'm nosy and dig into new things, and sometimes I stubbornly turn away and choose to remain ignorant. Probably you do the same. On FaceBook I've noticed links to Rose Chat Radio, but I've never clicked on them, figuring I could not handle one more distraction. However, today the link on Facebook shows the photo of the editor of my local rose society's newsletter (Wow!!!), so I clicked. Turns out there will be a "rose chat" next Saturday morning, October 20th, at 10:30 (don't know what time zone) with Carol and Carolyn Parker, renowned rose gardener, photographer and author. Among other rosy things I'm sure they'll talk about Carolyn's upcoming appearance at our local Festival of Roses put on by the Marion County Rose Society on November 3rd and 4th in Ocala.

I will do some more investigating on the Rose Chatting, but I didn't want my ignorance to be your ignorance. So here's the link.

Rose Chat scheduled for October 20th at 10:30AM

I'll be posting on our Festival of Roses very soon. If you remember my posts of last year's Rose Display and Rose Show (the links will take you to those two blog posts), you know it will be a glorious rose event. Hopefully, some - maybe many? - of you will make room for it in your schedule. And the chance to meet and hear Carolyn Parker, a Californian, speak in the eastern United States is a definite rarity not to be missed. It may even be a first!!

Here's a postcript from Chris VanCleave, the originator of Rose Chat Radio:

Sherry,

Being an internet broadcast, you can listen anytime by going to the archive page. That's the beauty of the internet.

There are a couple of ways to listen:

On the Blog Talk Radio Website:  http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rosechat

On the Rose Chat Radio Website:  http://www.RoseChatRadio.com 

Just click on the Show Archive tab. It will bring up a page of all previous broadcasts and a player that you can list on-demand by clicking a button.

Finally, you can also listen and subscribe to the show via iTunes for FREE:  http://t.co/dgBYXmj6

A lot of ways to listen, its good to spread the word about roses!  I will be speaking myself next weekend at a rose conference in Ozark, Alabama, and Teresa Byington and Susan Fox will be interviewing the Carol's... I'll be listening on the road... I enjoy reading your blog. have it tagged in my reader and don't miss a post...

Thanks,

Chris

My garden feels abandoned

And so do my readers, I think.

There was a time when I could not imagine losing interest in my garden and in the blog that described it. Alas, life is full of curveballs that we don’t see coming. Mine was stress. Stress from caring for my much loved senior dog, Ellie, and stress from my job and my inability to keep the house presentable. In mid-August I decided to retire effective September 21st, and with broken hearts DH and I had the vet put Ellie to sleep on August 30th. If you’re a pet lover, I don’t need to tell you about the grief that ensued with the loss of my baby after sixteen and a half years. So here I am. In some ways better, and in some ways not quite there yet. The positive thing about having an ugly, weed-infested garden staring at you everyday – well, not everyday since without Ellie I have no reason to go outside – is that I have the rest of my life to make it beautiful, so I don’t have to rush or stress over it. Except that it really is ugly.

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Spurge has overrun my gravel.



And has even invaded the beds where I was always johnny-on-the-spot to pull the little weed seedlings before they took hold.



But there are things about which I am hopeful. This is my newest acquisition, ‘Stephen’s Big Purple’, an audacious rose to place on Ellie’s grave. This photo was taken two weeks ago, and now SBP has two flower buds.



‘Hermosa’ was suddenly sprouting new canes two weeks ago and is now nice and leafy green and blooming.



The ‘Purple Coneflowers’ are still setting flower buds, amazingly. They really have been bloom machines all summer and now in the fall.



One of the ‘Clotilde Soupert’ bushes is lovely, green and blooming in spite of my neglect. The other one isn’t.



I have tons of seed heads from all the echinacea plants that dominated the garden this year. I’m thinking they’d make great Christmas presents for half the world.



There are several rose bushes in this photo, but you don’t see any roses, do you? Even accounting for my neglect, this was a very strange summer for the roses with all the rain we had. Maybe the roses were stressed, too. And maybe a little sad with me.



It was a great summer for butterflies and bumble bees. Funny thing… yesterday with a bunch of weeds in my hand I felt an odd vibration going through my hand. After several moments of confusion I thought maybe I should drop the weeds. There on the gravel was the bumble bee I had picked up with the weeds. A very strange sensation that was.



The Pentas performed beautifully on the front edge of the ‘Le Vesuve’ bed. I chose red for the sake of the butterflies, thinking it wouldn’t clash with the pink blooms of ‘Le Vesuve’ since the buds are red. Well, they did clash to my eye, but they were beautiful anyway and still are.



‘Le Vesuve’ had a gorgeous bloom this day, but he has not had a good year. So much dieback and so few leaves and flowers. I wonder if I need to dig him up like I did ‘Mme Abel Chatenay’ and deeply re-excavate his bed. I fed him good yesterday and sprinkled him with fish. A bit of advice for you: do not apply fish emulsion and stay in the immediate area for several hours afterwards. Man, that is an obnoxious smell!



The most wonderful addition to the garden this year was this dahlia, ‘Le Baron’. The two rhizomes I planted in spring grew big and beautiful, and they are still blooming! Through the heat and the wet of this monsoon summer their flowers never seemed to mind. One thing I’ll do differently next year is to place cheap tomato cages over the young plants, because they got so big they fell over onto ‘Full Moon Rising’ and baby ‘Maggie’. Fortunately, falling over didn’t seem to bother them though. They just sprouted new growth upward from the thick horizontal stems. If I can keep them tidy, these will be beautiful throughout the garden. They’re a deeper purple than my camera captures.



So I’m off and running on this blog again. Thank you, Sunnync, for posting today on the Antique Roses Forum that you missed me. There’s no tellin’ how long I would have continued to procrastinate on this new beginning. Some of the upcoming topics I foresee in our future are weeds, making the decision to expel roses, rejiggering the garden (again), weeds, and probably more weeds. There's a lot of weeding ahead of me!

I long have believed that everything has a reason, so I’m thinking that someone out there is in this boat with me… not wanting to face up to a wreck of a garden and maybe even a little sad to boot. So lets see if we can’t squeeze a little (or a lot) of joy from this gardening thing and get the love back. Together I think we can do it. The keyword being together.

Butterflies and banana spiders

My, I had fun this morning! The back garden was just a-flutterin’. Several Gulf Fritillaries were enjoying the Purple Coneflowers, making the almost roseless garden a happier place for the gardener.

I was so surprised by their constant wing-flapping.

They did not sit still and pose for these. Flap, flap, flap.

It was no bother at all to keep pressing the shutter. Click, click, click.

Seeking the perfect image.

Close but no cigar.

Perhaps closer.

This isn't the age old problem of "someone moved". Mr. Blur was frantically trying to get a spot on the other guy's flower, but he must have been sending out some territorial vibes, because Mr. Blur never landed.

We may have a winner.

You know, if these aren't enough to satisfy your butterfly appetite, I have a few dozen more.

Two for one.

I just can't stop.

Alright, I'm under control now.

I believe this is a Honey Bee. The Bumble Bee wouldn't sit still at all.

Though it was only 86 degrees at this point, it felt pretty much like a sauna, and I was decidedly damp. My pajamas were stuck to my legs, and my arms were dripping. Isn’t Florida in the summer wonderful? Humidity notwithstanding, the garden really was an idyllic place this morning. I didn’t even walk through a spider’s web. Around here you have to carry a stick and wave it in front of you as you walk along. DH gets a good laugh watching me through his den window.

You can barely see the web of this Banana Spider aka Golden Silk Spider aka Nephila clavipe, and if you look hard above the right roof edge, you'll see the inhabitant of this web herself. The interesting thing is the way a buds-bearing cane of 'Blush Noisette' has been pulled toward the spider with the silken threads of her web.

There she is seemingly support-less in thin air.

But the web really is there. I don't bother webs that are not in areas where I walk. These spiders are beneficial except for the willies they give me, so I leave them be.

The fading glory of 'Nur Mahal'.

The soon-to-be glorious 'Duchesse d'Auerstadt'.

This lady, along with several others, has strung her household from an azalea up to the eaves just like the fake stuff you see in the movies.

These caladiums were a stroke of brilliance last year to hide the bare ground and naked legs of 'Reve d'Or'. Unimpressive last year, they make a big impact this year, being about three feet tall with leaves well over a foot long.

'Gingerland' caladium is new this year and smaller than the one above. I think these won't be as big as the other. And I really love the coloring on Gingerland. He likes sun.

Before the tree trimming I moved 'Napoleon's clay pot out of the dead shade onto the patio. Poor guy had no leaves. He's leafed out in the meantime, and now this twiggy China has a flower. Happiness is...

You can see why they're called Golden Silk Spiders.

They're all over the place, and this one's about four inches long.

Just at dinnertime we had a nice downpour - again. Gee, it seems like old times in Florida since we're having these nearly daily rains. I thought I'd see if I could capture a wet web.

Here’s Mrs. Banana Spider. She’ll be doing some housework tonight since the rain knocked two big, round holes in her web. It’s always something, isn’t it?

A pruning party in San Jose

It occurs to me that there should be more city rose gardens in our country. Can I get an Amen! to that? Public gardens that put hundreds and even thousands of beautiful, blooming roses on display are a source of pride for the citizens of the town and an attraction for tourists. Unfortunately, great ideas are often followed by skeptical thoughts. Who will pay for it, who will do the work, who will follow through on maintenance? I suppose the answer to those questions is the citizens, you and me. Well, gee, how can two people do all the work that a public garden requires? Just take a look at how the citizens of San Jose, California do it. I think they can put to rest all of our skepticism. Anyone game for taking the plunge in your town?

Thank you, Terry Reilly, Co-Founder of the Friends of the San Jose Rose Garden, for sending me the link to this pruning video after my original post of the aerial garden tour video. Now I am excited to be able to edit this post, because you have followed up with another email with this kind message:

 Hi Sherry,

People often wonder how we were able to set up a vibrant organization like the Friends of the San Jose Rose Garden.  Well, the All-America Rose Selections wrote a case study on us.  It reveals all of our secrets! You might want to share it with your friends.

Click HERE to view the case study.

Terry went on to say: 

In addition, people may be interested in a great volunteer tracking software that was developed on our original tracking concept.  It's free and is great to keep the volunteers engaged.

You can see it HERE.

You can also check out the website of Friends of the San Jose Rose Garden by going HERE.

I am incredibly thrilled that this post has become a conduit of this valuable information. Once again, rosarians - and that means you, Terry - have proven themselves to be the definition of generosity.

Now boarding for the rose flight

This is the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden in San Jose, California. I'm sad to say that I've never been there, but the folks in and around San Jose have a real gem.  Restored in 2009 and maintained with the help of volunteers, it is also a trial garden for new rose varieties. I've seen many "glamor shots" of individual rose blooms taken in this garden by GardenWeb rose friends, but I had no idea what a beautiful garden it is and that it was named "America's Best Rose Garden" on August 12, 2010.

Thanks to Facebook, I now know about this wonderful rose garden, but little did I know when I clicked on the link that I would be taken on a very cool hexacopter ride and an exhilarating birdseye tour, complete with orchestral accompaniment. In the first seconds I recognized the radio-controlled six-bladed helicopter and stuck my netbook under DH's nose. He's really into aerial photography and RC, and this video held his attention for the whole 12 minutes and 42 seconds. I just know you will enjoy it, too. And if you're ever in Silicon Valley, be sure to treat yourself to this fabulous garden.

236 Years ago today – Happy Birthday, America!

Some years ago DH and I stopped at a little diner on Highway 17 in Pierson, Florida on our way to our weekend house on the St. John’s River in Welaka. We sat down in the booth, placed our order and waited for the food to arrive. On the wall above the salt and pepper, ketchup and napkins there was a sheet of paper. No, it was not a menu or any other words of the proprietor. It was The Declaration of Independence just as it appears here. I was rather excited to see it, because I could not ever remember reading it. DH proceeded to recite the first sentence, “When in the course of human events…” that he had memorized for his role as Thomas Jefferson in a play in grade school. Fifty years later he could still remember the Words. I on the other hand had not learned them though I’m sure they were hung in every elementary school classroom of mine, and I was keenly interested to read the Words in this special document that so many men had signed at the risk of their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor.
 


So I started to read it - out loud - with a look of approval from DH. It’s a lengthy document with long sentences, and several times I ran out of breath before the period finally came. I tried to give it all the deference at my command with proper diction though the ancient script made it none too easy. Still etched in my memory are the many times when my emotions would suddenly jump to my throat, choking the flow of words, and bringing tears to my eyes, blurring the page before me. I am not a person who cries in front of others, since hiding my emotions is preferable to showing my emotions. However, several times the Words of this Declaration forced me to pause to regain my composure which caused me to realize that being an American has consequences even for those of us who haven’t paid much attention. These Words held meaning and power in my life. These Words, penned so arduously and prayerfully by fifty-six men long since dead who were faithfully representing the people back in their home colony and by so doing were committing those people – farmers and shopkeepers and their families - to a war against the greatest power on earth, these Words cut into the deepest part of me, a part of me of which I was unaware – the Patriot. Growing up in America inculcates the soul with a love of country that though not entirely unique is exceedingly profound even if we Americans don’t fully realize it. Reading the Words that brought about my Beautiful America out loud was quite an amazing experience. Click HERE to be amazed yourself.