This time I wasn’t clumsy

I needed to reach way into the bed behind this exquisite daylily scape to cut away some dead wood on ‘Clotilde Soupert’. I’ve done this before, and it’s ended badly. Buds have snapped off, and entire scapes have broken. Been there…done that, and I wasn’t going to do it again with the last scape of ‘Joan Senior’. So I stepped in and very gently held the scape away from my body with the back of my hand. I barely felt it on my skin. And then it snapped and fell to the ground. I groaned in tragic agony. I’m still stunned. The scape is laying on my desk in front me. I can’t bear to throw it away. Eighteen buds showing and a perfect flower. Such a sad end.

A forgotten day

These photos were taken on June 28th. I don’t know what was going on that day and the days after, but it must have been pretty hectic because I never went back and looked at these photos. And that’s enough words for a Wednesday.

Photo hoarder

As you can probably guess, I take photos like they're going out of style. I do delete the out-of-focus ones, but that hasn't always been my habit. Even if I don't use them, I keep them. Plus I resize them, sometimes into two smaller versions - and I keep them. I can't let go of them. I even saved the photos of roses that have left the garden. Makes me think of apron strings.

Some gardeners cut flowers for the house. I don't. I take photos. I love to see the flowers on the bushes and scattered everywhere in the garden. Perhaps it's because I'm a fairly new gardener who has lived most of her gardening life with very young plants that don't bloom as profusely as large mature plants. So some neurosis, similar to growing up in the depression, compels me to leave the flowers in their natural place.

Some gardeners keep journals. I don't. I keep photos. Sometimes daily photos. Sometimes 100 daily photos. The folders are named with the date - like a journal. I don't need to write about the garden. I can see the garden, the growth of the plants over time, the color variation of blooms from cool spring to hot summer, and the maturing of every phase and part of the garden. I like seeing. Seeing is retaining. Seeing is never forgetting. Seeing is always having and never losing. When it's dark outside, I can see the garden at noon. When it's raining, I can see the sunlit roses. Seeing almost displaces touching and smelling.

Photography may have shaped a different perspective on gardening in me. The garden from behind a camera lens may look different from the garden completely unobscured. Without the camera I sometimes miss the ability to zoom, under-appreciating the larger view. The practice of cherry-picking my shots may make the 'real' garden seem inadequate. Do I put the camera in my pocket long enough to stop and smell the flowers? Do two hands holding the camera mean no hands holding a flower?

Can there be a downside to photo hoarding? Not the cost. With no film to develop or pay for, the sky's the limit, right? Hmm, maybe not. My hard drive is the limit. I just checked. I have 106 Gb of free space on my C: drive and only 30.4 Gb of photos in the My Pictures folder. That means room for maybe four more years of photos. Ah-ha, the computer has two other hard drives, so maybe the sky is the limit... unless I get a camera with more megapixels. Then all bets are off.

Macro mania

Who's who:

1 - 3         'Blueberry Frost' daylily
4              Rain lilies
5 & 6       'Baronne Prevost'
7              'Fred Ham' daylily
8 & 9       Coneflowers
10            Salvia farinacea aka Victoria blue sage
11             Spider on 'Clotilde Soupert'
12             'Sherry Lane Carr' daylily
13 & 14    'Mme Abel Chatenay'
15 & 16    Tree frog in 'Kent's Favorite Two' daylily

Special visitors

 

Let's play "What's My line". These two delightful ladies have many things in common but mostly one thing in common. The many things are 200+ roses, and the one thing is the nursery that is comprised of those roses. You might ask Linda Rengarts on the left if she owns a rose nursery. She would answer, no, I do not. You might ask Cydney Wade on the right, "Did you start your own rose nursery from scratch?" And she would say, no, I did not.

Not to be too cute, I'll just cut to the chase. Linda is the one who started her own rose nursery from scratch, and Cyd is the one who now owns the rose nursery. She bought Linda's nursery last December. Linda and Cyd are the former and present proprietors of my famous favorite rose nursery, Rose Petals Nursery currently in Newberry, Florida.

Cyd and Linda wanted to see my garden in person, and I wanted them to take some cuttings from several of my roses, so they rode about an hour south on I-75 from Gainesville to Ocala this hot Sunday afternoon. Cuttings are important to small own-root rose nurseries. They are the seeds of next season's product line. Usually, cuttings are taken from their own bushes, but if there's a rose that they don't have, they have to buy the plant just like the rest of us and wait for it to become mature enough to tolerate cutting off several inches of cane. Or someone like me who grows the wanted rose can donate cuttings that will provide stock and a mother plant for the nursery. Most importantly, this donation puts a rose in commerce for other rosarians to grow and enjoy. The more people who grow a rose the less likely it is to disappear forever. Linda and Cyd turned their love of roses into a business that will perpetuate Old Garden Roses for decades and perhaps even generations.

It is a very exciting thing to me to be a part of perpetuating these roses beyond the reach of my small garden. So it was an easy thing to live for an extra week with crispy deadheads all over my roses. Deadheads that would have gone to the county compost pile or been dropped under the roses will make new plants that one day, hopefully, some of you will plant in your garden. To me that is very cool!

Plus I feel like I have a vested interest in seeing that Cyd's efforts are successful and her nursery lives long and prospers. With shipping costs as they are a Florida own-root OGR nursery is like money in the bank for Florida gardeners, and the quality of her rose plants is second to none. The truth is that I want all small nurseries to live long and prosper, and hopefully, gardeners all across the country will be their frequent customers. However, having a Florida nursery that raises - and proves - roses in Florida's conditions gives Florida gardeners that extra ounce of assurance that a rose will prosper in their garden. That's a good thing, as is keeping Florida dollars in the hands of Floridians during these tough economic times. Gardeners in every state should feel the same way.

Cyd is in the process of relocating the nursery - bush by bush - seven miles down the road to the 100-acre ranch that she happily shares with her husband, Art, and lots of antique horses, antique cattle and untold numbers of chickens that lay delicious eggs. I'm sure she is excitedly busy designing the layout of the new gardens and collecting ideas of all sorts for the parts and pieces that go into making a garden beautiful and customer friendly. She's a sweetheart and dedicated to the task before her. Not least of all is the support and encouragement that Linda gives freely to Cyd even going so far as digging two roses out of my garden that will find a new home in Cyd's garden. They're great ladies who make a great team. I'm so blessed to count them both as friends.

My new driveway bed, the unveiling

Perhaps some of you remember my early-spring moaning while digging the new bed next to the driveway.  Well, it hasn't looked like much until lately even with 'White Maman Cochet' and 'Souv de St Anne's' blooming. Naturally, just when those two roses are in between flushes, the bed finally has a full look, but here goes.

I added caladium bulbs that I had dug up next to the garage (to make room for the snapdragons) at the back and at the curb, thinking they'd be good filler.  As usual, they do their job and then some.  This is where I put all the seedlings that I had left. My placement wasn't very good, and I've already had to move a few things. Oh, well.

In the back half there's Mealy Cup Sage, gaura, hollyhocks, a snapdragon and a coreopsis (both not visible) and Echinacea 'Pink Parasol', all seedlings.  Plus liriope, Giant Apostle's Iris and at bottom right the Bourbon rose, 'Souv de St Anne's' from about 1916, a sport of 'Souv de la Malmaison' .

The gaura is in the middle. It didn't stand up much and basically was a flopper, but at least it bloomed a little. The iris is much bigger than it looks.

The hollyhocks has flower buds on it, and something has been munching on it. I'm very surprised to see the buds. Can't wait to see what color it is. Keeping my fingers crossed for baby pink.

This iris is growing just as well as the others. This is the one that bloomed this year.

In the foreground is 'Souvenir de St Anne's', I'm pleased with its growth so far which seems to be faster and less awkward that 'SdlM'. As soon as she's in bloom again, you'll be the next to know.

Here's 'White Maman Cochet'.  I know you're saying "Where?"  She's been quite a steady producer of flowers and is not as gangly as the pink 'Maman Cochet'.  You can see her better in the next photo.

In this photo from June 28th you can better see the structure of this young Tea rose.  I'm pleasantly surprised by all the canes WMC has thrown.  It seems as though all Tea roses grow differently.

Here's a new cane with its candelabra of flower buds getting ready for a show.  There are a lot of right angles on this rose.

'Pear Harbor' is still blooming which is amazing since I moved it out from under 'Le Vesuve' in March. I didn't know how it would respond to such treatment, but it didn't even blink.

The 'Pink Parasol' echinacea is fading nicely to white which I prefer to brown any day.

 

This salvia has gotten huge. I've cut off several stems to give the WMC some room.

'White Maman Cochet' is nearest to the street, and it won't be long until she is as wide as this 8-ft wide bed. I'm looking forward to her hugeness.