Tag Archives: roses

Boots and the lovely Nootka

other gardens,
Nootka rose

I’ve had more time for exercise and gardening and cooking this week. It’s been raining, so I didn’t plant much, but I did buy more plants.

My favorite nursery is addictive, and expensive. So after I indulged there, I went to a “big box” nursery where I could get four zinnas for the price of one at the favorite.

Cloudy skies make it easy to take pictures of flowers without the discipline of rising before the sun to do it. I was at church briefly yesterday, but long enough to snap these brighteners of the day.

I can’t seem to help myself, and keep taking more pictures of old favorites, and whatever looks a little different from last week. It’s certainly nice to have this place to put a few samples of my catches. Occasionally I look back at old blog posts and am usually surprised at what all is stored here. Taking pictures of a few details in the incredible display the Creator puts before me every day helps me to pay closer attention.

The Nootka rose doesn’t bloom for very long, and I was startled by the cheerful little faces all over the many bushes that line one sidewalk.

Rudbeckia
 I don’t know the name of this Rudbeckia but I’d love to find one to plant at home.

The cat visitor whom I named Boots has been very friendly. Yesterday she let me brush her for a minute. This picture shows her big feet; I named her Boots because they were all white, but now I think it’s a good name because they are large.

She is so tame, she no doubt belongs to someone…maybe it’s the family down the street that has a lot of (neglected) cats. One cat we took in a very long time ago, who had kittens, ended up going back there after the kittens were all grown up. We didn’t know she actually called that place home until we had been used. But it’s o.k. We kept one of her sons and he was fully ours.

Nothing special is going on in our household relative to the holiday, because B. has to work Monday. But I’m doing some cooking and shopping today, anyway. The sun is coming out…maybe next week I’ll put some plants in the ground. I am pretty wonderfully blessed to have these gardens to dig around in!

More and more I’m also appreciating “having” several cats whom I can go away and forget whenever I want, and who won’t scratch up the furniture. I can concentrate more on my digging.

Mystery Beauty

my garden


I promised you a picture of our favorite tea rose, which grows next to the sidewalk in front. Can’t believe I got a picture of this bloom before the beetles and/or earwigs got to it. Soon after we bought this house, we gutted the front yard, taking out the old lawn and everything else, leaving ONLY this one rosebush. We have no idea what variety it is. I wanted to remove it this year, because it looked so dreadful last summer. But my dear husband vetoed that idea, and so far so good, this year. Probably it just wants more water. I will try to be a better caretaker.

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.