Sunday, November 11, 2012

October Roses

My apologies for not posting for over a month. I simply had too many things going on in my life again, and on top of that I was away for a business trip for almost two weeks. So unfortunately there was hardly any time to garden and really no time to blog.

Despite the repeated neglect from my side some of the roses in my garden bloomed lovely in October. Here are a couple of shots of the best rose blooms from last month:




The winter rains started early this year, which is certainly a good thing, and when the first showers were announced in the weather forecast I went out and cut some blooms to prevent them from being ruined by the rain and to enjoy them indoors. The rose varieties shown in this photo are from the left to the right: 'Pretty Jessica', 'Charles Darwin', and 'The Prince'.



Here you can see the whole small bouquet. It was so nice to be able to go out and cut myself a little autumn plonk of roses. 




My three 'Our Lady of Guadalupe' roses in the front yard were almost flowering like in spring.




This is 'Old Fashioned Girl', a miniature rose, which I transplanted into the front yard not too long ago. She is doing quite well in her new spot. I am really smitten by the white blooms with the pastel apricot center. The flower form is very elegant, too.



'Georgetown Tea' was also having some nice flowers.




'The Prince' one of my favorite roses in my garden this fall. 



The blooms of 'The Prince' (fully open in the photo above) can change quite a bit with age and also different weather conditions,...



...but I have never seen a flower that didn't gently tug at my heart!



The photo shows a spray of 'Pink Pet'. To me it seems that this is another rose that refuses to accept the fact that we are approaching the winter. 




'Charles Darwin' never ceases to impress.



'Moonstone' also got some beautiful blooms, but they sometimes failed to open properly. I think that this rose needs a lot of sun and heat to flower well. Unfortunately where I planted this Hybrid Tea rose it gets a little bit more shade than I thought.



I just love, love, love the color of 'Charles Rennie Mackintosh'. The pink blooms have a wonderful touch of lilac, which I haven't seen in any other rose that I know. In addition to that the cupped flower shape is so romantic. It doesn't get much better than this rose in my opinion!



Another bloom of 'Charles Darwin'. The flowers come in many nuances of yellow, which always makes it exciting to observe "what color you get this time". 



'Stephen's Big Purple' was producing the biggest bloom last month. Considering that this rose is only growing in a two gallon container, that is quite astonishing. I have one complaint, though. As I wrote in my last post, the name of the rose leads you to assume that you will get purple blooms, but in my garden they still come more in a deep, bold, pink color. I had hoped that with the temperatures cooling down the color of this rose would do the same, but nope, not the case.



'Sweet Chariot', was starting a very nice flush last month. This rose is really cute and smells heavenly.

Hope you enjoyed looking at photos of my roses from last month!

One little story I would like to share with you at the end. Today I met in person for the very first time with Jeannine, another garden blogger, who also lives in San Diego. We "knew" each other only over the internet by leaving mutual comments on our blogs, but a few weeks ago she was sending me an e-mail casually dropping that "we should get together sometimes". Today we actually made it a reality! It was so much fun to talk to someone else, who also loves blogging about gardens and gardening itself. Jeannine is writing a great blog called GardenEnvy, which I always enjoy to read. If you would like to visit her blog, please click here and the link will take you there.

See you in the garden!

Christina