I DID Promise You a Rose Garden!
Totem pole in the northeast corner of the rose garden welcomes visitors
[more…]
The plaque on the base of the totem pole reads:
IN MEMORY OF ALL THE LOST YOUTH OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
The totem represents young animals, an eagle on top, arms sheltering a human head, right arm is a salmon, the left arm is a raven. The phallic shape below is more like a fin. The base is a young bear cradling a wolf or fox. Intrigued now, I will be checking the library for more information on the date it was sculpted and the carver of the pole.
The garden itself lies between my home and the local library. It’s always part of my morning stroll, these days while in its June glory.
Rose garden facing south
This is the view of the road into ‘downtown.’ It’s a busy road travelled by people coming off the BC ferries crossing the Strait of Georgia.
Looking south east
Petals were falling like snow as I took this photo. What a celebration, just to be here at this moment.
North path into Library grounds
This is a wonderful place to read, set back from the street. In the early morning, there are cat meetings held here. They come out from under a thick hedgerow and walk up to greet me. Then they greet each other with a variety of responses.
Now for the characters. If anyone out there can identify these beauties please do so. I just call them by their colours, although I do recognize a David Austen rose when I see one. There are none in this garden.
White rose in the morning light, the scent is very sweet
I was told the white rose is more fragrant because it saves all its energy for its scent. I love the way they reflect the colour around them, a little yellow in the morning sun, more blue in the evening.
Yellow roses have a lemony scent
Red velvety rose
Ending with an elegant white rose
What is happening in your garden this week, today? Let us know, if you are not into posting images, post a garden poem or story, or paint a word picture of your garden.
[I am posting this early, it is 12:44am EDT, so I can sleep late tomorrow. Hope to wake up to read your comments with my morning coffee.]
my goal this weekend is to prune my rosebushes. The previous owners have left them badly neglected and I’ m going to cut them back and feed them.
With pretty much a blank slate to work with in my yard, I have become the plant stalker, hitting all the nurseries for sales. I’m buying perennials, planting them in a temporary location until next spring. Then I’ll start some new flower beds and move them there. Hopefully, I may be able to split some of them and have lots of plants. I got 4 perennials for $5 this week, so even if it doesn’t work, I’m not out a lot of money.
COWS
C-rossed branches
O-ld dead branches
W-eak branches
S-ucker branches
This tip sheet also recommends a dab of white glue on the raw cut to foil rose borers.
That’s a great acronym.
It’s September-November in the Bay Area for pruning. About 17 years ago, I was fired by a gardening client because I pruned her hybrid tea roses in the wrong time of year. “Everyone knows you don’t prune roses until September!” she said. “Don’t come back! I’ll find a gardener who knows what he’s doing!”
It was August 29. Oh, well.
We had a rose expert who claimed that every type of
rose bush required a different kind of pruning. That’s
for the purists. And then there are the zones to consider.
On Vancouver Island we have Northwest Coast climate made warmer because of the gulf stream. We do a rose clean up in November. Only dead branches are cut so as not to encourage growth. All leaves are stripped from the bush to prevent disease (blackspot, powdery mildew) from the winter rains. All rose debris is cleaned up, roots are protected with a little mulch.
Then March is the real pruning time, when most bushes are reduced to about 3 main branches. The thing to remember is that pruning forces the plant to spurt into growth mode.
I’ve never pruned rose bushes this size, 8-10 feet. Like I said, they’ve been neglected.
I live in Lewiston, ID, in the Snake River valley where the weather is very mild and very dry. A friend of mine who is a native and a gardner said you can get away with trimming them several times a year here, even in the middle of summer.
One thing I know for sure, roses grow like weeds in this area.
So glad you are starting this up over here. I’d like to post photos, but even after reading the user guide, I’m still having trouble with it. I can’t find the “Your files” link, in order to upload. Can you advise me on where this is? THANKS!! Hope this develops.
Your photo or image has to be online.
It should be no wider than 400px.
Most people upload them to “Photo Bucket” if they do not have a web page.
If you right click on your uploaded photo and then click on
“COPY IMAGE LOCATION”
you will get the URL of “your files” or “your image location” which you paste in the line below. (without the spaces after the < brackets >.)
< img src=”url of photo location” >
Make sure URL is in quotation marks.
Example if you right click on the last white rose above
and click on ‘copy image location’ you will get my URL of image location.
So ‘your files’ is the URl of photo location where you uploaded your photo.
Hope that helps, now please ‘recommend my diary.’ 🙂
Thank you very much! Keep posting flower blogging diaries…can’t be too many!
Zone 6, Southeastern PA.
Weeding, weeding, weeding on the agenda today. Plus looking for 3 more Japanese holly to complete a mini accent hedge. Lord I hate to plant after May.
In bloom: hardy geraniums, Gaillardia ‘Burgundy’, self-seeded Malva and annual larkspur, roses, Santolina ericoides, Korean hyssop.
I keep meaning to figure out how to post pics for this diary, but, well, so far that’s gone the way of my master plan for my existing beds — hatched about 5 years ago and still only half-finished.
What’s your least-favorite plant in your garden? Mine is a weedy-looking Centaurea (perennial bachelor’s button) that has only been allowed to remain this year because it helps to block the dogs from running through my new plantings. It’s outta there next year.
in order to save this garden diary from rolling down
into oblivion.
Thank you.
I couldn’t choose a favorite rose color. In fact, I didn’t much care for roses, until I discoverd rugosas, which don’t require fertilizing, worrying about aphids, black spot, creeping ick, etc.
My own garden looks like a jungle right now. We were two weeks early with warm days, and early weeding didn’t fit the end of school for us. So – massive weeds, and hot sun to work on them.
We need more roses, some geraniums (looking for Ann Folkard, not finding any), and much much dividing of daylilies, hostas, overgrown irises, liriope, primulas… and the narcissus bulbs are so thick they are crowding the stuff around them.
Oh, I must get outside!
Oh, I must get outside!
Saturday morning garden blogging is a temptation to sin, isn’t it? I always thought it should be posted on Saturday nights.
Just after midnight Eastern Time.
But now, I must go out too. I only have a patio garden
and I like sitting out there with my morning coffee.
Yeah, but I wasn’t awake then. 🙂
I just count my reading garden diaries as “garden-related activity” and therefore have ceased feeling guilty about wasting daylight. Besides, I’ve already been out and have come in for late breakfast. 🙂
Pride
Envy
Anger
Greed
Sadness
Gluttony
Lust
and
Blog Addiction
LOL. Last night I went to bed and thought “I will not turn on the computer all weekend.”
serious rose envy here. Mine are struggling between the unseasonal heat and whatever the heck is eating their leaves.
My favorite rose? Any one that happens to be tickling my nose with scent!
No scent, fahgeddaboutit.
Beautiful pictures.
In this rose garden, they are all scented, and I am over
there everyday getting my back exercise while enjoying them.
Some day I am going to fall right over into the blooms!
What a beautiful diary, Sybil. MORE!
Fav rose is the Peace rose (neocons roll eyes). . .ivory with hints of peach ‘n’ pink.
My husband just got ‘Garden Party’, parented from ‘Peace’ and ‘Charlotte Armstrong’, which IMO has nicer foliage and shape than ‘Peace’. We’re pleased so far; we’ll see how it does after overwintering in the garden.
I looked up several photos of it on the web and it’s very pretty. The photos make it look a lot whiter and pinker than peace?
Yes and no. I think the lack of peach tones make it seem whiter by contrast; it’s definitely ivory. Definitely pinker than peace with no salmon tinge to the pink.
Listed as having slight fragrance but I can smell it across the yard in the evenings, also 3 cut ones across the room inside.
This year, anyway, I’m a big fan!
Ever since I gave up my landscaping business, I’ve routinely removed roses from any garden for which I’ve been responsible. For me, they require far too much input for far too little reward, especially if we’re talking hybrid teas. (I don’t mind the old varieties, and species roses can be nice.)
I just uploaded a few photos of what our front yard looks like this morning to my Flickr site.
Nice! I’d never heard of Kangeroo Paws before. Would it grow in Zone 5?
Unfortuately, no, not unless you have a greenhouse. They like zone 9 and warmer.
My friend’s father used only a little detergent diluted in lots of water in a spray bottle on his roses and he never had any problems.
Pruning and good soil prevent pests and diseases.
I used to consider roses ubiquitous and dull until I took workshops on their care. We live in an area where they do very very well with little care.
Nothing can beat the scent of roses.
All good points, especiallly the geographic location one. I certainly didn’t mean to deny anyone else the pleasure of their preferences.
I’ll even make a confession here: I bought a Joseph’s Coat a couple years ago to climb up a trellis on our front porch. It died – in a garden where nothing dies – and I grieved a bit.
I do like rose scent, but I’m more a sage and freesia kind of guy.
The landscaping part, mostly. The business part, no. I think I still have clients out in the world that owe me like 1200 bucks, just because I hated doing the paperwork end of things. And I stopped in 1991 or so.
And now that I edit magazines and write, my life is entirely paperwork.
But there was something to be said for being outdoors all day, and I was in much better shape as a result. Especiallly after carrying truckloads of 50-pound bags of rock and gravel up stairs to people’s back gardens.
Thank you. My son is signing up for a comprehensive course at the Community College and he would never be without work here. He really wants to work outside.
It was only two years ago that I shovelled 25 wheelbarrows
of mulch from a heap in the front of the building and
brought it around back to my garden. Couldn’t do that
today.
would win the poll.
Eek. Roses. I’m more of a veggie planting person, but I’m getting to know more flowers as the years go by. I bought a little rose bush 2 years ago and, after the torrential rains we’ve had in the Calgary, Alberta area the past few weeks, it’s finally started blooming.
It’s a Morden Blush. That’s not my pic. I don’t have any uploaded yet. I always thought roses took more care than I was willing to spend time at, but this one’s doing pretty good so far with very little maintenance.
-an heirloom rose that I cloned from a 100 year old bush
-a ‘Gertrude Jeckyl’, David Austen rose
-a shrub rose with many tiny but strongly scented roses
He never prunes, waters sporadically and fertilizes only
if I remind him and they are doing very well.
I have a Morden Blush. Great little rose – so far, it’s disease-resistant, blooms a lot, and is awfully pretty too. Nice combination.
Beautiful pics, sybil! You’re so lucky to have such a long growing season in BC. It can be hit and miss here in Calgary. Daffodils in March in Calgary? Good luck! 🙂
the sea air is so good.
Our town is full of rich Albertans, who made their money in oil and gas and now they feel landlocked. So they come here buy monster houses and insist on expanding the marinas for their monster boats. They clog the streets with huge SUV’s.
We need real people like you.
I like sea air but the humidity wreaks havoc with my muscles, unfortunately. 🙁
I just wanted to tell all you who previously signed up to do a gardening diary and any of those who want to, we have a group site set up for the FBCafe and we members there thought that it could be used for the gardening diaries as well to co-ordinate who is signed up. so if you will send me an email I will send you an invite from the site so you can be a member.. I do need email addresses to do this..
There is a calender on the site and you can enter the Sat. you want to do the diaries or discuss when in comments, etc.
Beautiful pics, Sybil, I am not feeling to good today so I can’t contribute any pics. and my garden sucks right now. Not totally but a lot of my plants are having probs….
This will be my garden diary swan song.
I don’t have a garden and therefore would not have enough
material for another diary. Just making the odd comment on
my patio garden or some gardens around town will be
enough for me.
I would love to see diaries on desert gardens,
native plant gardens, xeriscaping with drought resistant
plants etc.
I hope you reconsider! Writing about other people’s gardens can be nearly as fun. I used to write a garden column for the Contra Costa Times, a local paper here, and I wrote about gardens not my own about half the time.
You have a point, there is an advantage to writing about gardens
only as an observer.
For example on my way to the beach, I saw this amazing
border of nasturtiums. Photo doesn’t do it justice,
because it was a long border. It seems the gardener left the seeds
from last year and the plants reseeded themselves.
They were in every stage of development and very healthy.
You can do diaries on those gardens you would like to see or whatever, doesn’t have to be your own..
I hope you will continue…
I just finished “You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Start and $ucceed in a Farming Enterprise” by Joel Salatin. He’s a well-known promoter of grass-fed poultry and beef. But the book offers guidance for CSA’s in general like market gardens, even sawmills and just about anything that allows you to make a living by using your land in wholesome, natural ways.
Would anyone like to learn more?
Yes, it’s progressive thinking that leads to
progressive political policies.
yes please.
My husband’s family owns a sawmill, and he wants to do organic veggie farming when he grows up. (next week it’ll be either chemical physicist or artisan furniture maker again, so hurry please!). : )
Red rose – love and respect
Pink rose – gratitude
White rose – reverence, happiness
Yellow rose – joy
Orange rose – enthusiasm and passion
Pale roses, pink or yellow – friendship
Coral and peach roses – desire
Mauve roses – elegance and grace
These are somewhat arbitrary, I tried for a consensus.
The White House Rose Gardens
I believe this is where GWB announces his war plans.
It’s a wonder that the roses don’t wither.
[Insert joke about “fertilized with bullshit” here]
don’t forget Barney, First dog.
The most exploited dog in the history of the USA.
green with jealousy over all the rose talk.
Down here in the barely sub-tropics we don’t “garden” so much as beat back the jungle. With humidity and temperatures being what they are, roses — if you can get them to grow at all — bloom best Feb. – Apr. and have little scent.
Most of the plants you name I have no idea what they look like. Most of the plants I know as huge specimens are the kinds of things Canadians only recognize in subdued indoor pots.
What’s blooming here? Golden raintrees, royal poincianas, jacarandas, mimosas, crepe myrtles (all trees). Bromeliads and orchids. That’s about it.
What a list. It reminds me of the tropical greenhouse
in Montreal’s Botanical Gardens. It had banana plants
too.
Some gardeners are growing mimosas and palm trees on
southern Vancouver Island.
Do gardenias grow where you live?
Your list would make a great diary.
Oh, yeah! Two dwarfs outside my bedroom window. When we moved here over 20 years ago, an 8′ gardenia stood off our back porch and often looked like a snow mound of blooms.
Thanks for your diary suggestion. May I use your title — Machete Gardening? I’ll go busy myself now.
My first visit to New York City, I was 18 with a
girl-friend the same age. We travelled by train from
Montreal, arrived in Penn Station and stayed at the
Taft Hotel. On Broadway we walked into jazz bars and
listened to great music, for free. On the street, I
bought a gardenia from a flower lady. All day I thought
NYC smelled so sweet, forgetting about my corsage.
I have loved them ever since and have had ZERO luck
growing them in pots. Buds fall off.
Do a gardenia diary!
There’s a jacaranda in bloom down the street. My dog kicks up piles of the dropped blue flowers when we walk past.
and a late entry into the garden diary from Southwestern PA.
Nasturtiums
I love how shy they are.
Herb Garden Goes Wild!
The stuff in the front is marigolds-supposed to keep the bunnies away. That and proximity to the kitchen door, I suppose, seems to be doing the trick.
One of the first daylilies-more to come.
Columbines are re-blooming-I’m excited!
These two baskets were rescued, dying, from the clearance shelf. Now they’re thriving.
The anemones have started-lots of buds.
Hope this works-imageshack was torquing me off too much with the random “you’re taking too much bandwidth” thing.
and congratulations on your plant rescue. I love doing that.
My favourite thing though, is to put a little stick in
the ground and end up with a shrub. I took a cutting
from a perennial fushia in a church yard and now have
a lovely shrub.
Columbines, hmmm, they are not easy to grow. All the bugs
love them. But they are worth the effort.
shhh, Cheney is talking, I must go, out of respect
er I mean ‘ridicule.’ 😉
I love your “shy” nasturtiums. Used to grow them myself but I can’t remember why I stopped. Probably some type of trauma or another ;-).
What a great idea – garden blogging! Magnolias and Hydrangeas are blooming and perfuming here in Georgia. Please make this a regular feature.
different diarists hosting.
I would love to see desert plant diaries and
steaming tropical plant diaries.
Maybe we should include a few bugs to go with the plants.
That BooMan frog looks hungry.
Couldn’t respond to your poll because I didn’t see my favorite rose – Sterling Silver – which is beautifully scented and delicate lavender in color. I just finished planting dozens of flowers (after the fabulous end of season sale my husband found me last night) and I need to head off to take a shower. It’s 90 degrees and muggy in Minneapolis, and all the bending over to pull weeds and dig holes took a great toll on my back.
I also love my deep purple colored Clematis, bearded iris, delphiniums, peonies, primrose, pink and cream colored pampas grass, portulaca, moon flowers, morning glories. . .my gardens have a flair toward an English garden setting, overflowing with perennials in shades of lavender, blue, pale yellows and white. The peonies and iris are especially meaningful to me because my father transplanted them from my parent’s garden 20 years ago. Also, many varieties attract hundreds of butterflies and hummingbirds – and on a few occasions when I’ve been outside watering the garden I’ve had butterflies land on my flowered shirts, as though I was an extension of the garden.
It’s always a joy to fill in a few spots with annuals such as snapdragons and asters each year, for summer-round blooms (LOL! “Summer round” my foot! That means all of two-three weeks in Minnesota 🙂
Lovely diary – thanks for the great pictures (even if I’m once again a day late in participating!)
I could not find a Sterling Silver rose. Searches kept
coming up with actual sterling silver rose jewelry.
Need the Latin name.
But I found Stainless Steel; (LOL!)
Stainless Steel
and below a lovely lavender rose;
Starlight
and there is this 2005 variety, not like your Sterling Silver but what a beauty!
Honey Dijon
Wow – thank you! You got me all choked up with your thoughtfulness. It broke my heart when my Sterling Silvers only lasted two seasons. If I knew how to do it, I’d post a picture of the very first bloom. (Are you pulling my leg with the “stainless steel”? If so, that wouldn’t be very nice!)
I encountered a very bittersweet moment, when I walked into the chapel to attend my brother’s funeral, only to discover it was laden with stunning bouquets of lavender roses. Then something strange took place.
When I arrived home from the service (he lived many states away from me) I searched high and low throughout my house looking for the only three pictures I had of him. I searched all night to no avail, and finally at 8:00 a.m., I found a lone envelope, in the farthest corner of a rarely used closet. The only items in the envelope were the three pictures of my brother – and the picture of the Sterling Silver rose (which up until then had no connection whatsoever, and there would have been no reason for the pictures to share the same envelope because they were taken years apart from each other)
Something tells me Shirlstar would have some insight into the situation.
I would get another Sterling Silver Rose bush in his
memory because of that strange coincidence.
I kid you not, there IS a Stainless Steel Rose – I got
those roses from authentic Rose sites in Google while
searching for ‘Sterling Silver Rose.’
Yup – last night before I logged off I went and revisited your rose pictures – and sure enough, I confirmed the authenticity. (I think Bood Abides has me on guard at all times, never knowing when someone is pulling my leg.) The Dijon was truly amazing and so unique!
Thank you for the thoughtful idea about planting the rose bush as a tribute – and thank you for your kind words. I didn’t want my post to come off as a sorrow filled memory – because it was actually a story of joy to a great extent. I believe in messages from beyond – so I still find the situation with the envelope of pictures to be a source of comfort. And since there seem to be so many people on this site who are quite knowledgeable about issues that aren’t – um – “conventional” in nature, I was wondering if someone such as Shirlstar could add any words of wisdom.
Unfortunately – I’ve found that my gardening skills are nonexistent when it comes to roses. My heart was sure into it when we first bought our house – I was going to have the most stunning rose garden ever. But it just wasn’t meant to be ;-). Other than a few nice pictures, the only thing I have in return for all my blood, sweat and tears is a thorn that’s been stuck in my thumb for 18 years. The doctor spent over 1/2 an hour digging around with his scalpel trying to remove it – all to no avail. (I think he had to quit because even he was starting to get squeamish as he turned my thumb into ground meat) He thought the thorn would eventually emerge out the other side – through my thumbnail, but I’m still waiting. . .
Bless you for sharing all the lovely pictures – I hope you (or a rotation of gardeners) plan to host a weekly diary of this nature. You – and all the others who posted pictures – certainly did a marvelous job with this one! (The “shy nasturtiums” and your shower of white petals – among many others – still have me smiling 🙂
Wishing you a truly wonderful day – and the same to everyone else!
I had promised myself to quote from “The Gardener’s Quotation Book” when someone got around to posting a gardening diary, so here goes. Under the recent circumstances, I hope not to offend with my selected quote, but it’s one I truly enjoyed.
“Gardens. . .should be like lovely, well-shaped girls: all curves, secret corners, unexpected deviations, seductive surprises and then still more curves.” H.E. Bates A Love of Flowers
like the male body, rippling with muscles, alive with vigor and physical strength.”
I just made that up.
That’s so the men will not feel left out since there are so few metaphors using the male body.
Okay – I continued down your garden path of dew-laden flowers, straining in their growth to greet the sun. But then I had to erase the rest of my post for fear of banishment. . .In the meantime, I have to take a cold shower.
And I just realized how many Georgia O’Keefe pictures I have throughout my home.
Good night!
Sybil – what spectacular rose shots! I loved your diary and garden pics – what a wonderful way to start your day. Those of us who leave near beautiful gardens are in some way blessed.
It was a sheer pleasure, taking the photos and putting
them up. It’s so nice to be appreciated.