Saturday, June 9, 2007

more lovely roses

My cabbage roses are blooming!!!! I have Fantin-Latour - an old garden rose. It will only bloom once each year. But it's a big bush and covered with blooms. I thought the roses would be big - but this is only the second year, so maybe they will be in time. Right now they are quite small, but look at the wonderful detail, shape and color - I think they are gorgeous!
Another cabbage rose bloom - the color on both of these photos is pretty true - one is darker and one is a very soft pink. I left some of the photos in this post big, so if you click on them you can see the detail better.

This is Hawkeye Belle - which I have posted before. I really love the delicate color of this rose. (Oh, not sure if this actually is Hawkeye Belle - but that's what I'm calling it, because, hey, that's what the tag says!!) My only problem with light colored roses - white, peach or pale pink - is that the edges look very brown as they age. On a darker rose you don't notice that as much.


This is a rose bush down in the lakeshore garden - right next to William Baffin. It is John Davis - it's a beautiful clear, true pink - and it's loaded with blooms for a very long time. I'm amazed it can even stay upright - a ton of beautiful flowers here. The two together are simply unbelieveable.

This is Gertrude Jekyll - the rose I have to bury each year. I'll show an open flower later - this is a very pretty rose. And I wish you could smell it - heaven!

This is Country Dancer - I think I posted a bud earlier. A very pretty rose that repeats throughout the summer.
Friday our neighbor and friend, Gary, called and asked if I could use some good black dirt. He had picked up a load to do some work in his yard and his daughter's and ended up with extra. Well, of course, I can always find a place for good dirt!! So he brought it down, and we unloaded it. Mark in the meantime started making burgers to throw on the grill, and we called Gary's wife, Jeanette, and told her to come down too. We had a simply lovely evening sitting on the porch - eating burgers and drinking a very good bottle of wine. I love spontaneous evenings like this - where you don't have to clean the house (altho I was happy I'd washed the porch screens in the afternoon!!) or make a big fancy dinner. Just good friends, fun conversation, and a really great time. It seems like we don't do nearly enough of this - so hopefully Friday night was the beginning of a lovely summer full of easy entertaining. Thanks guys!
The downside to that lovely evening (if there even was one) was that I had to move all that beautiful dirt this morning. Good exercise! Jeanette did a garden tour with me last night after we ate - it's so fun to share the gardens. Pretty much why I love doing this blog - thanks to everyone who takes the time to look at all my photos and comment - it is much appreciated!

12 comments:

Laurie and Chris said...

Your roses are so pretty. My roses have buds any day now they should be opening. :)

Karen said...

Once again, your flowers are magnificent. I love the Hawkeye Bell rose. I'm not sure what my rosebush is -- I didn't save the tag on that one. The tea roses are starting to bloon. I'll try to get some pictures posted. It seems to be a good year for roses here in Colorado.

Kitt said...

It's a good year for everything in Colorado this year, it seems. I've never seen such fulsome blooms.

Kris, your roses are fabulous.

prairie rose said...

Kris - It is such fun to look for new postings on your blog - your flowers are beautiful. I was especially glad to see the picture of Gertrude Jekyll. When my Gertrude Jekyll started blooming a few days ago, the color seemed too pale. Now the later ones are more like yours. Do you think the temperature makes a difference in the color? We had a few minutes of pea-sized hail on June 2 which was hard on everything!

kris said...

Thanks Laurie & Chris - I can't wait to see photos of your roses when they start blooming. This is so fun!

Hi Karen - thank you! It seems to be a good year here too - everything is so lush with tons of blooms. It will be fun to see your tea roses - I don't do them because they have to be winter protected, so I'll enjoy sharing yours!

Thanks Kitt - I love roses and this year they are all really blooming well. There is something about the weather or ?? this year - everything here is really "fulsome" too!

Hi Marlene & Everett - hail is not good! Hope you didn't have too much damage. Gertrude is really loaded with buds right now, but I only have a couple open. Imagine with the hot weather we're supposed to get, it will just pop. Don't you love the scent? I don't know what affects the color - but I notice that on a lot of my roses.

Tom O'Neill said...

Great blog Kris. Anni and I will have to come by and see this awesome garden in person sometime this summer.

- Tom O'Neill (your favorite nephew in-law)

meresy_g said...

Your cabbage roses are beautiful!! Every year I think about planting some but get scared off. They seem finicky. Are they? They sure are lovely though. Wish I could smell them.

Peter Hoh said...

I've avoided roses. I have a couple that were here when we moved in, but I dont treat them really well. I don't want to have to do the winter tipping -- seems like too much work. That said, one rose is blossoming, and they look lovely. Might be warming up to them. Perhaps I'll prepare some room this fall and buy some roses next spring. If so, I'm tapping you for advice.

Anonymous said...

More beautiful flowers!

Your Friday night sounded like a lot of fun. I like spur of the moment things like that. I wish we had some nice neighbors like that. Most of ours just stick to themselves - except for Donna and Hank next door, of course.

Iowa Gardening Woman said...

I have an unidentified rose that looks like your picture of John Davis, I wonder if that is what my bush is? Great photos.

violetlady said...

Those pinks are just wonderful. The delicacy is exquisite.

kris said...

Hi Tom (was going to type in "favorite nil," but not sure that sounds so good!) - thanks for checking out the blog!! We hope you and Anni do stop in - anytime - we love to see you.

meresy_g - thanks! I bought my cabbage rose last year. It sat in a pot on the patio until August - waiting for me to figure out where I had room for it. It grew like crazy in the pot - easily doubled in size. This year it's growing like crazy - and for the first year in the ground, it has a ton of blooms. They're smaller than I expected, but there must be 3 or 4 dozen blooms! Might be too early to say for sure, but I'm not seeing the finicky behavior! (I live in zone 4 - we had a mild winter, but some below zero temps. I covered the crown with compost and set a couple bags of whole leaves kind of around the rose for protection - so thinking it's even pretty cold weather hardy.) The blooms are so cool - I would say, go for it!!

Hi Peter - buy shrub roses - zone 3 or zone 4 hardy - and you will be very pleased with how little care they need. I don't do tea roses here and only have one zone 5 that I HAD to buy (Gertrude Jekyll) - so only have one that I tip in the winter. The first couple years I just covered Jekyll with leaves, but burying really does protect much better. Some of mine die back to the ground in the winter, but they bounce back and grow larger each year, just like perennials. I don't spray - I don't feed - the only thing I do for my roses that I don't do for the other plants is cover the crown with compost in the fall. There are some beautiful roses that do really well in Minnesota!

Thanks Lynne - I'm with you - I love spur of the moment get togethers. Sometimes we get too caught up with all the stuff on our "to-do" lists. It's nice to slow things down a little and enjoy!

Thanks iowa gardening woman. I love the John Davis rose - very pretty color, and the bush is just covered with pretty blooms. It's a keeper!

Thanks violetlady! I do love roses. Have you decided on one yet?