December Roses

Somehow last month the pale pink, pink, off-white or white roses have captivated my attention. I think I will never get tired of these soft muted colors.

The most beautiful rose that was blooming last month, with no doubt, was 'Belinda's Dream'.

I bought this slightly pink Hyacinth forcing glass last autumn and I love to us it as a vase for pink roses. There is something about how the tinted glass picks up the pink hues of the roses.

To me the pale pink very full flowers of 'Belinda's Dream' are irresistible. 

'Mary Rose' with her easy going, unpretentious, happy blooms.

'Mary Rose'

My 'Climbing Iceberg' was also blooming profusely last month.

A rose that didn't bloom much, but managed to churn out a few of her gorgeous blooms, after generously being fertilized a few weeks ago, is 'Georgetown Tea'.

'Georgetown Tea', again. Here is the flower a little bit more open.

I love how the out petals fold backwards in the mature rose flowers of 'Georgetown Tea'. So graceful!

'Moonstone' bud.

Only can admire the elegance of the buds of this rose!

A rare sight in my garden: A bloom of 'Captain Christy'. Unfortunately the rose is still a very weak grower and mildews. But the old fashioned charm of the blooms is quite enchanting. 

'Our Lady of Guadalupe' in the winter morning sun.

Same rose photographed under different light conditions. 

'Our Lady of Guadalupe', once again in the morning sun. This rose is one of my most profuse bloomers and has one the quickest repeat. But it mildews since I have it (probably five years or longer) under certain conditions regularly. I know I can have completely or almost completely disease resistant roses in my garden and even though it is a pretty rose I am considering to take it out and try another variety instead.   

But when 'Our Lady of Guadalupe' is good, it is really good. 

'Marie Pavie' a rose that never fails to mesmerize me with her delicate charm. 

'Pierre de Ronsard' looking down on me against the clear blue California winter sky.

'Pretty Jessica' is not a generous bloomer in my garden, but I love her color, form of the blooms and her delicious fragrance. On top of that this rose is completely healthy year round. 

Hope you enjoyed to see some roses, that were blooming last December in my garden. I know that most of my readers are facing a very different garden reality at this time of the year. Wishing you that winter is not too hard on you or your plants.

See you in the garden!

Christina

I am linking to 

Rose Garden Malevik

Bernideen's Tea Time, Cottage and Garden

November Roses

First, I would like to thank all of you who left good wishes for the health of my mom in the comments to the last post. I am happy to say that my mom is recovering relatively well from her current health issue, even though that type of problem will take time to heal.

I am sure that most of you can imagine that taking care of someone who is ill can get stressful at times and blogging is a welcome distraction and fun activity for me that contributes to keep my own spirit up. I am glad that I can do it from Germany as well.

So here comes the long overdue post about the roses that have bloomed in my garden in November. Following the "new" weather pattern in California, November was a relatively warm month, which prompted a lot of roses to develop nice flowers, even though it was already relatively late in autumn.

The most beautiful rose bloom produced 'Auckland Metro' in my eyes. I am simply in love with the ivory shade of this Hybrid Tea rose. It is such an elegant hue.

Bud of 'Auckland Metro' in the morning sun.

Unfolding bloom of 'Auckland Metro'.

'Mister Lincoln' is the only pure red rose that I am growing in my garden. The tone of red of this rose changes quite a bit with the temperatures. When the days become cooler 'Mister Lincoln' takes on a more cool, dark, wine red color, whereas when it is hot, it is more a warm medium red.

Even though 'Mister Lincoln' was already bred in 1964 by Swim & Weeks I think it is still one of the best red roses for a warm climate. The bush is vigorous and the rose comes with an extraordinary strong classic rose fragrance.

'Pretty Jessica' back lit by the sun.




As usual at this time of the year 'Pope John Paul II' is one of my most floriferous roses.

I never get tired off the lovely white blooms of this variety.

'Pope John Paul II'

'Pope John Paul II'

'Pope John Paul II' has a decent petal count and finishes up in a nice way, which can not be said of all Hybrid Tea roses. 

'Belinda's Dream' at her best.

I am still getting excited at the sight of a flower of 'Lavender Crystal'. This rose has simply a killer lavender color and I am happy that, even though planted in a difficult spot, it is producing blooms on a regular base by now.

The petticoat blooms of 'Mary Rose'. Just delightful!

Above you see 'Moonlight Scentsation', a Mini-Flora, whose flowers make themselves a bit rare in my garden.

I like the yellow center of the flowers and 'Moonlight Scentsation' can produce quite unusual lavender undertones, but...

...it suffers from powdery mildew, if the conditions are right. Unfortunately that is quite often the case in my garden. So I don't know if I will keep this rose long term, but I will give it at least another year.

Unfolding bud of 'Georgetown Tea'. I love how the softer autumn light plays with this emerging rose bloom. 

Last but not least one of my favorite roses 'Scepter'd Isle'. Sometimes the blooms look like powder puffs and I appreciate...

...how this rose shows its yellow stamens as the flowers are opening more. 

All in all a healthy, floriferous, romantic rose. What is not to love?

One more thing: Recently my blog reached 300.000 pageviews. A big thank you to everyone who stops by and takes a look at my posts. It feels so good to know that the blog is being read, your visits truly make me happy!

See you in the garden!

Christina

I am linking to

Rose Garden Malevik
Bernideen's Tea Time, Cottage and Garden

Garden Tour: Roses and other Happenings...

Work has gotten the better of me, again and for that reason the blog had to be somewhat abandoned. But here I am today with a new Periscope video for you.

It is another tour through my garden and I am looking predominately at roses that were still in bloom when the video was taken about three weeks ago, but also checked on other plants that were recently planted. At the time when I shot the Periscope video, my gardener was trying to open up a clogged drain in our front yard to get our property ready for a hopefully generous El Nino (Winter rains), so you see a little bit of that, too.

Hope you enjoy having a look!

As always, thanks for watching! I would love, if you could take the time and leave a comment!

See you in the garden!

Christina


Thanks for hosting Hakan

A New Decorative Jar for the Garden, Narcissus Paperwhite, Daylilies and Roses

Sunday was again time to shoot a new Periscope broadcast of what has happened in the garden last week. Since a couple of months now I am scoping live weekly about my garden and have a lot of fun doing it. I would like to invite everyone of you to join me on these weekly garden tours and come see my garden through the lens of my iPhone.

In the video, that I am publishing today here on my blog, I am showing you a blue and white hand painted decorative jar, that I just placed in the garden. I also talk about Narcissus Paperwhite bulbs and present you my brand new green bulb forcing vases. On the garden tour I stop by my newly planted white daylilies 'Gentle Shepherd' and towards the end we will look together at rosa 'Mary Rose', which was blooming profusely that day. I finish the tour by checking on my bearded Iris rhizomes to see the progress that they have made.

As always, thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the tour. I appreciate if you would leave me a comment. Thanks!

See you in the garden!

Christina

October Roses

It has become almost ridiculous how late I am blogging about the roses that have been blooming in my garden in the previous month, but I have been simply so busy, I couldn't get up this post earlier. So please bear with me, I hope things get better in the future.

Coming to the actual topic of this post: The roses have seen their share of ups and downs this October. We still experienced very hot days, but also some cooler ones in between. I had nearly everything in the garden from almost perfect rose blooms to fried rose flowers clinging to the bush for dear live, that you simply couldn't feel other than sorry for them. For the latter our strong hot and very dry Santa Ana Winds, that originate inland and come from the Great Basin and the Mojave Desert to Southern California, are responsible. We regularly get them at this time of the year and they are also often causing wild fires, but thankfully not this year in our area so far.

I am starting with the a perfect bloom of 'Sweetness'. The lavender colored roses have become my favorites lately and 'Sweetness' is a rose jewel in this color category in my garden.

Another rose that was flourishing in the heat was 'Auckland Metro'. I love the warm glow in the center of the rose.

The photo above shows 'Stephen's Big Purple', which also didn't seem to mind the heat.

Here is a more open bloom of the same rose. Before I bought 'Stephen's Big Purple' I had read raving reviews about it, but now I am not sure if I really like it. I had expected that the color would be much more purple, but in my garden it takes on a very bold reddish purple coloration, which is a little bit too much for my taste. Maybe underplanting it with some gray leaved and white flowering plants can tone its color somewhat down, but that remains to be seen. 

'Mary Rose' that I featured more prominently in the last monthly rose post (if you want to see it, please click here) kept soldering on.

It is astonishing to me that even though her petals are very thin, this rose can withstand the heat pretty well. 

Another rose that I am not sure about if I really like it is 'Mister Lincoln'. It is a truly good red rose here in Southern California, if you are into red roses that is.

But I have the same reservations towards this rose that I have towards 'Stephen's Big Purple'. The color at times is very bold, almost loud. It starts out as a warm-red rose, but fades to a more cool bluish-red one as the flower ages (not shown here in my photos). I have to admit that it has a fantastic fragrance. This rose is one of my mom's favorites, so there is no question that it will stay in the garden, no matter if I am completely sold on it or not.

One of the pleasures of these very hot October days, that I mentioned in the introduction to this post, were that we have been able to have breakfast in the garden very early in the morning just wearing T-shirts on one weekend. But that is not why I published this photo. It is because our breakfast table was crowned by a small bouquet of 'Frederic Mistral'. 

Close-up of the bouquet, seen in the photo prior to this one. Isn't it lovely? It still gives me incredible joy to be able to go through the garden and almost casually cut a small plonk of roses in October. This is living the California Dream for me!

Here you can see a bloom of 'Frederic Mistral' still hanging on the bush. 

But it is not all rosy. This photo shows the damage that Santa Ana Winds actually can do to roses. The blooms that you see belong to 'The Prince', usually a star of incredible beauty in my garden. These blooms are not spent, they are fried by the heat and dry winds that those Santa Ana conditions bring with them. 

Since months 'Heritage' always has some blooms flowering on the bush, even though it is planted in a less than ideal condition in way too much shade.

The flowers are so very romantic and I really do like the light shell pink subtle coloration of this rose.

Another beauty that was showing off last month was 'Nimbus'. It is a bit of an older floribunda, that was bred 1989 by Le Grice and that you don't see that often.

This rose is exhibiting a most unusual color range, anything from mauve, purple with more or less prominent brown undertones to an almost clear lavender, depending on the temperatures, light intensity and probably soil conditions. I find it a very fascinating rose, that I have come to really appreciate.

I caught 'Nimbus' one morning with all these water droplets glistening in the sun.

A quite lovely sight!

A bud of 'Moonstone'. I simply like the photo, so it made it into this post.

'Rhodologue Jules Gravereaux' is a rose that you don't get to see that often either. It loves the heat and I find it extraordiany beautiful.

Here is a shot of the same flower cluster as in the previous photo just a little bit more open. I find it very hard to catch the delicate beauty of Tea roses with my photography and have to say that the two photos just don't do 'Rhodologue Jules Gravereaux' justice. It is so much more lovely in person. 

'Irresistible', a miniature rose, puts out perfect little blooms, even though it grows in a container that is way to small for it. 

'Belinda's Dream' also produced perfect blooms of great beauty. 

The last rose that I would like to feature in this post is 'Bewitched'.

This rose is a very classic Hybrid Tea rose, with the typical elongated bud form, with a very good repeat,...

...incredible fragrance,...

 

...that also makes a wonderful cut flower. I wouldn't be without it!

Hope everyone who celebrates it had a very happy 1st Advent! It is unbelievable to me that Christmas is not that far away anymore. One good thing about it here is, that temperatures finally have come down and even though the weather is still pleasant the really hot days seem to be over. There is rain predicted in the weather forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Please keep your fingers crossed that it is really reaching us. We need it so desperately!

See you in the garden!

Christina