Category Archives: other gardens

Crazy About Roses

my garden, other gardens,

This week I spent a good while pruning roses at church, which reminded me how much I love those flowers, and I decided to prolong the feeling by writing about it a little and looking at pictures with you. The photo above is of our two climbing roses we have at home, Cécile Brunner and Golden Showers, taken last spring, which I think was the first season after being pruned properly.Here they are this year. The C.B. at least is a little bigger. It’s quite a bit younger, and is the first plant that has worked to sort of fill up that corner of the yard visually. Note in the second picture the change in the background–the neighbors’ messy palms! Oh, well, I usually have my nose in the blossoms or am looking the other direction trying not to get poked in the face while I cut dead blooms, so that I don’t see what’s over the fence.

Here is a close-up of the Golden Showers, a rose I bought with a Jackson & Perkins gift certificate that my fellow-gardener sister K. so thoughtfully gave me for my birthday one year. Now it always makes me think of her.

This lovely flower that the Japanese beetle is enjoying is a tea rose in the front yard; its name is Pristine. (We have another rose bush out there for which I can’t find a photo at present, but I’ll show you in the future.) Pristine is a gem.

At church we have about 50 rosebushes. When I was tending them earlier in the week, deadheading, pruning a bit, watering, I didn’t want to stop, though I didn’t finish the job. I never do finish at church, because there is enough work there for at least one full-time gardener, and we don’t have any. It is a challenge to stay focused and enjoy the task of the moment; the mind wants to race ahead and dwell in the problems of the future–as in, How will I ever get half of this work done?

But somehow, that day, I was able to take a few minutes of the many and think how marvelous it is that I can do such sweet-smelling and satisfying work, loving Creation by ministering to the needs of these beauties. They can’t help it if they poke and scratch me, and the aromas and velvety petals and rainbows of colors make up for the pain.

Who would have thought I would like an orange rose? The two at church are on either side of a sidewalk intersection, and not being the same variety, they complement each other in their different tones of orangeness. This one is Ginger Snap, and the one I have pictured at the top of the sidebar, in two tones, is About Face. I am very fond of both.This is “merely” a gorgeous red rose that gives glory to God there on the church property.

My favorite at church is this pink climber that is also my special pet. It is at a spot where a lot of people see it, next to the parking lot. Last fall Mr. Glad helped me to drive a large redwood stake into the ground between it and the pillar that is concrete on the bottom. Then I wired the stake/post to the pillar, so that when I anchor the rosebush to the stake it won’t get pulled over, and the trunk of the rose will be closer to the redwood part of the pillar, where I hope to train it. A long process. But it is a climbing rose, and last year it kept reaching out away from the pillar. It’s doing better now with some discipline.

Now that May is past, many of the roses will have finished their biggest show. There will be plenty of rose work to be done, or left undone, all summer long. But let me not miss the immediate and rich rewards.

Joanna and the Beanstalk

crafts, my garden, other gardens, , , ,

About this time in the last couple of years I was planting seeds of these large pole beans called Painted Lady. It all started one springtime when my friend L. asked me to come to her house and see the puzzling beans that had been growing there after having arrived from she-knew-not-where.

When I saw them, there was new spring growth of runner beans with large leaves and gorgeous flowers, and there were a few pods left on the vines from the previous fall. Inside the pods were large speckled dry beans. I had never seen anything quite like them.

I went home with a few of the beans for seeds, and searched online garden sites for plants that matched the description.

It didn’t take long before I found identifying pictures and information stating that these are the only pole beans with a bi-color flower. They are called Painted Lady after Queen Elizabeth I, who earned that nickname for wearing a lot of makeup. There were sites where one could buy seeds. One woman was selling a packet of five beans for a tidy sum. But I got mine for free! I planted them pretty soon, but it was too late in the season for them to do anything but make a few flowers before they were cut down by the frost.

L. had more beans again that summer, though, and she gave me more, which I planted earlier and more successfully, as you can see by the photos.

Not only did my second planting grow well, but the plants I had started too late the previous year sprouted again–they are perennials! These beans are too good to believe. Who ever heard of a perennial runner bean?

Everything about Painted Ladies is large. The flowers, the leaves, the pods, and the beans. The vines want to grow to the sky. I strung jute twine vertically along the fence, tied loosely at the base of each plant, for them to hang on to as they twisted upwards.

We never solved the mystery of how they got started. The seeds seem a bit large for a bird to drop in, and L.’s neighbors don’t garden. In any case, It felt magic. The fairy-tale seeds grew vigorously and rewarded me with the harvest in the top photo. I wanted to share the bounty and the adventure with my gardening friends, so before I cooked any of my pile I measured a bit more than five beans into packets to give away. I saw too late that I had accidentally named Queen Victoria instead of Queen Elizabeth on the packet. 😦

The beans when cooked have a typically mealy texture, and not a strong flavor. The skins are somewhat chewy. I’ve only used them in soup.

This week the rain or drizzle has been constant, and forcing us to put off planting the garden. I’ve been thinking a lot about how much work there will be when the ground dries out just a bit. But just writing about this happy gift makes me remember the surprises that make me glad to be out there doing my part to be ready for heavenly blessings.

A Green Olive Tree

church, other gardens

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.

Psalm 52:8 (Or 51:10 Septuagint)

This has been one of my favorite Bible verses for about 20 years, so it seems doubly appropriate to put alongside the picture of olive trees and daffodills in front of my church. Olive trees always make me glad, and I haven’t thought enough about why. I don’t like olives, but olive oil has been a staple throughout the world from antiquity, and when I look at the trees I feel my connection to all the people who have been nourished by them for thousands of years. Not only that, but the trees are known for their longevity in fruitfulness, a gift of God that I covet.

This morning the sun was shining when I came out from Matins, and I was ready with my camera. Everything was sparkling from all the rain, and there were the tiniest baby green leaves on shrubs, which of course could not be captured in any way–but they were what prompted me to look in my purse to find my camera.

You can see that some daffodills are hanging their heavy heads down because they couldn’t drink fast enough.