When dead isn’t dead

This is really two stories, one story of the struggle to survive and another of the tenacity of life. This is the story of ‘Bermuda’s Anna Olivier’. She’s a mystery rose found in Bermuda, a rose that no one has really been able to identify but which has survived there in fairly harsh (by rose standards) conditions. I bought her from a local nursery and planted her in my garden in March, 2009. She began beautifully, wowing me with abundant big, fat, buttercream blooms on a wonderfully healthy bush.

In 2010 and 2011 she did seem to suffer from chlorosis which I assumed was due to the nasty cement-like soil in that part of the garden. Through the summer of 2011 and into the fall she was an ugly bush that would still cover herself with blooms.

October, 2011



In the winter of 2012 I was betwixt and between digging her up to renovate the bed with better soil and just plain digging her up, but the truth was that I hated the thought of losing this beautiful rose. Still, she was losing canes right and left – in this photo, particularly on the right. She used to have a right side.

February 11th


After renovating ‘Madame Abel Chatenay’ I was not eager to repeat it for Anna, so I thought I would try boring deep holes around her and pouring milorganite and liquid humus into them. Then one day in early March I decided I would dig her up and relocate her to another part of the garden. As I was digging, I noticed what bad shape she was in. The more I would cut dead wood the more I had to cut. Digging her up proved to be too big a job for this mere woman. I couldn’t get the taproot to budge, and the more I worked at it the more damage I was doing and the more I saw how bad off she was. So I finally decided to give up on her. The kicker was that she came out of the ground in two pieces – not a broken bush but rather two bushes.

This happens occasionally. Two cuttings root in a pot and start to growing and you can’t tell there are two individuals in the same pot. In fact, it had only been days since I read about this very topic on the Antique Roses Forum, so I was astonished to see it in my garden. The problem with two plants in one hole is that their needs are only met by half. Half the space, half the nutrients, half the water. Suddenly, I understood why this bush was performing so badly. So onto the yard waste pile they went. Later that evening I was telling DH the tale of the two Anna Oliviers, and he interjected, “they were fighting each other to survive.” In a split second it hit me that one of them deserved a shot at survival. I ran out in the dark and got the bigger one out of the pile and into a big blue pot that didn’t hold the water I poured into it for very long, so I set a couple of half-full bags of soil on her roots and hoped for the best.

The next day after work I took photos of the twins, put the smaller one back on the pile, and elatedly planted my Anna Olivier in the back garden after evicting ‘Madame Joseph Bonnaire’ to a pot.

March 5th



Even in her poor overnight conditions her new growth was fine, and I was so excited to have my rose back.



The next day was a very different story. Apparently, putting her in the dirt was the wrong thing to do. She looked limp to me. And she got limper every day.

March 11th


And limper. I kept her watered and thought about posting on the Antique Roses Forum the question: when is dead really dead?

March 20th


For at least a week I had been thinking about pulling her. This past Saturday I definitely gave thought to yanking her, but she’s not a rose you yank without gloves. So on my rounds with camera on Sunday I looked at her real hard. I simply could not believe a rose would just die like that. They’re tough. Everyone knows that! But she was a crispy critter for sure.

April 1st



Then I thought I saw something green. Was it really there? I didn’t have the benefit of magnification, just my nearsighted eyes, but I knew I saw a green dot.



I looked elsewhere. There were more tiny green places.



Some not so tiny.



This one isn’t even a quarter inch long, and at the same time it was huge.



There were maybe half a dozen bits of green.



‘Bermuda’s Anna Olivier’ had decided to stay.



Today her green dots were definitely green stems.

April 3rd


This is the main cane, and it’s really vertical not leaning over.



This is the base of the main cane. How ‘bout them apples!!










Now then, would you jump to the conclusion that this bush is dead?
Better not.
Better be patient and let nature and the rose do their thing. I don’t know how much upper cane loss she’ll have, but I’m not touching her with clippers until she tells me to.



Can I hear a big amen out there for life... and the victory over death?
Happy Easter everyone!

The wider view

Today after circumnavigating the garden and taking 427 photos I finally seemed to see the whole of it. I went to different corners than usual and found different sights, different pleasures.



Not feeling inspired to do more deadheading, I just sat on this bench with my netbook editing photos in the glorious, breezy 84-degree shade and enjoying the garden immensely until 4 o’clock when the hot sun found me.



From this peaceful nook the garden can be breathed in with no notice of the outside world. I think most of the hard-labor days in this garden may be behind me. Of course, not all, but I find myself just as fervently seeking out this spot as I did the next project. Today’s project was pure enjoyment – and that’s all.



From the back door ‘Mrs. B R Cant’ was looking so strong, fighting a good fight against the thrips.



She is becoming a real presence in her corner of the garden, relishing her cool shade.



This is the best she has ever looked. It’s been five years. That’s hard for me to believe. I had to subtract twice – 2007 from 2012. That’s five, right? How time flies, but for Mrs B R she’s just coming into her own.



I loved this new view of her from the bench.



She is the belle of the garden. There’s no question.




The new chick in town, however, is ‘Pat Austin’, and she made quite a splash today.








Not too shabby for the third bloom of a pretty flimsy potted rose. She had me at hello.

Thrips

They’re the teensiest bugs you’ve ever seen with your naked eyes. Of course, you can’t see them if you don’t deliberately go looking for them, but it’s not hard to know where to start looking.



Light colored roses are the prime targets for thrips. I don’t know why. However, I was greatly dismayed today to find that ‘Enchantress’, a magenta Tea Rose, was infested with them. The photos here are of ‘Clotilde Soupert’, but ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ and ‘Duquesa’ were ruined also.



Clotilde has been blooming for a good while but she’s building for her first big flush – or I should say was. I wasn’t going to, but I decided to de-flower them today. I compare this task to picking cotton even though I have no experience picking cotton. I wear a trash bag tied to my waist which gets quite heavy with the many, many ruined blooms that I drop into it, and the required position is bent over at the waist leaning over and into the bush. This is why I wasn’t going to do it, but the thought of having roses that look this awful for weeks and weeks changed my mind and made me choose the pain. You see, the thrips larvae fall to the ground and then mature to fly and lay their eggs in the next crop of flower buds…and the next and the next for several generations through the end of April usually. So my perspective is to end it now by disposing of the flowers and the larvae in them before they can reproduce. Last year the next flush was fine.



Once the sepals have opened even just a little bit it’s obvious that thrips are in the bud because of the stained petals that show, and no amount of wishful thinking will save them at this stage. They have already been infested for a good while. The blooms will most likely ball and never open…



and if perchance they do open, they are as ugly as sin and have to be deadheaded anyway. I figure this flush is lost anyway so why not get rid of it and start the rose moving toward rebloom.

This is ‘White Maman Cochet’, usually an exceptionally beautiful Tea Rose. You can see the buggers by parting the petals open and looking down at the base of the flower. The light-colored creepy-crawly things will be scurrying around, but you’ll have to look hard. They really are tiny.

I’m thinking ‘Chrysler Imperial’ has them by the looks of his crispy outer edges and unusual form. I didn’t think about it being from thrips so I didn’t break it open to check. The removed flowers and buds need to be disposed of in a way that the thrips can’t escape to re-invest. One word of warning...be careful wear you stick your nose this time of year.

‘Hermosa’ was beautifully unscathed. The buds of ‘Madame Abel Chatenay’ are still tightly closed, so I don’t know about her yet. She had them last year, so I’m assuming she will again.



Early in the season there’s a lot to be said for pink roses.

On to the front garden

At a time when things in the garden are changing and also appearing out of the blue I am sad to say I did not get to walk through it today. Instead I stayed inside with DH while our DirecTV satellite installation was completed. Others are bookworms. I am a TV slug. I love movies, a few shows like The Closer, Fox News, football and small doses of other sports that DH likes. But mainly I hate the huge bills that Cox Cable was sending us every month, so the change was made, and I like it.

However, that leaves me with no memories or photos of today. The missed photos of ‘Polonaise’ yesterday were followed by more missed photos today. Is distressing too strong a word for my feelings? Well, maybe you understand. I do have some photos from Sunday, so I’ll just pretend today didn’t happen. Ooh, I don’t like the sound of that. Here’s Sunday.

This is the northeast corner of the circle which is situated in full southern sun. It’s almost a vanity shot with some gratuitous boasting thrown in. Leaves, leaves, and more leaves…and green leaves! I cherish spring for the leaves it brings, but I apologize if it’s a boring blob. To me it’s dense foliage. What could be better, I ask you? Or until now, rarer? Maturity brings all kinds of improvement, you know, and bushy rose bushes have been a wishful dream for me, so I can only hope leaves are here to stay. I don’t think you can see clearly the distinction between the bushes. I’ll tell you what and where and maybe with a zoom capability you can see where one ends and the next begins. Bottom right: ‘Clotilde Soupert’; bottom left: ‘Souvenir de Francois Gaulain’; above him: ‘Duquesa’; to the right: three bushes of ‘Hermosa’; top middle: ‘Pinkie, Climbing’; far left: another ‘Clotilde Soupert’; and top left: ‘Clotilde Soupert, Climbing’. These are my leafiest roses. Glorious, aren’t they?



‘Le Vesuve’ is on his way. He’s not quick out of the gate because he loves the heat, but above him yesterday was a veritable cloud of flower buds. I eagerly wait.



My volunteer larkspur forest. I’ve been assuming that they would all be purple because that’s the color they were last year. What a pleasing surprise when I saw that they are also lavender and pink. I do hope that the breeze blows their seeds absolutely everywhere. The pink one on the right sprouted from a vacant rose pot. I never even considered pulling it out – even to transplant.



This is ‘Lilian Austin’. She was a tiny thing after pruning. Her eagerness to get going is a nice surprise. She’s blooming on new growth that is only a few inches long.



Another ‘Lilian Austin’ bud.



The grande dame of my daylilies, ‘Sherry Lane Carr’. Some of you may not know that my affinity for this daylily is rooted in her name. You see it’s almost the same as mine. Change one little letter, and you get Sherry Jane Carr, the girl I used to be before marriage changed everything. Seeing this daylily’s name in print still catches at my breath and makes my heart flutter. It must be the thrill of fame – sort of, or at least as close as I’ll ever get. Anyway, this plant is a division of one that was buried about three feet back, under ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’. I dug up that plant in February, I think, divided it in two, and they never missed a beat. This one has a budded scape. The other original plant that I did not divide but which is really quite huge has six scapes on it… the last time I looked anyway.



‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ or 'Borderer' and friend. Looks too peachy to be SDLM, but I can't be sure.



Does anyone else buy packaged bulbs and bareroots with the best of intentions and then sort of forget them? I really need to stop buying them because so many don’t make it into the ground. This new sprout is a dahlia ‘Le Baron’, one of three planted about ten days ago. Hopefully, the other two will pop up and join this one.



The first Purple Coneflower blooms don’t look as shabby as first blooms usually do. They’re a welcome sight.



And more are coming.



‘Softee’ is underway. She’s a miniature that grows in a pot. By the way she’s almost thornless and quite healthy and pretty.



‘Le Vesuve’ again.



This is ‘Anda’, a small polyantha single. This flower is about two inches across, maybe a tad less, and the petals have a habit of rolling on one edge or the other for a rather unique look. Her color is really deep red which usually explodes in my camera as fuschia. I think she’s darker than this photo shows, but at least it’s red – on my monitor anyway. She gets some black spot but not terrible.



The ‘Queen of Beauty and Fragrance’ again, followed by the nightmare of every rosarian.



This is a balled flower of SDLM. It will never open, sealed shut by untimely moisture and/or thrips. This time I think it was moisture in the form of Saturday night’s downpour in the middle of a thunderboomer.



he-he. No, it’s not a very grainy photo of the garage wall. It’s a photo of the bird netting I “installed” so the two clematis vines would have something to hold onto – hopefully. I didn’t expect the mesh to be this small, only half inch. Hopefully, that will not be an impediment to their climbing. I also put some of the netting on ‘Maman Cochet, Climbing’ since her companion clematis ‘Duchess of Albany’ has had to lay on the ground for two years unable to grab hold of that Tea Rose’s thick canes.



This one is ‘Henryi’ (closer to the camera above).



And this one is ‘Westerplatte’. Hopefully, the snapdragons on both sides of them will keep their rootzones cooler.



This is clematis ‘Princess Diana’, already to the top of the four-foot obelisk.


So cottage-y. Hopefully, this ethereal sight distracts from the big hole on the left side of the garden…


…where ‘Maggie’ is just getting started.


Gardeners can’t have it all all the time. There’s always something not quite right – or very wrong. We hope no one else notices.