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

September Roses

September has been a tough month for the roses and all plants in general in my garden. It was hot, but sometimes it was very hot (highest temperatures peaking at 103 F/43 C). Even without taking the extremes in consideration temperatures have been too high here to fit the rose's comfort zone.

Me still being on a tight schedule and also gone on a business trip last month I was watering as much as I could and my husband did, too, when I was away. All the roses in the ground survived, but I lost or almost lost a few (time will tell) which are still growing in small containers. Very sad, but I guess it is natural that gardening comes with some losses.

That being said, some roses did remarkably well even under these difficult conditions.  Please take a look at my most beautiful rose blooms from the month of September:




This is 'The Prince', a David Austin rose, and in my opinion he won the "Most Beautiful Rose of September" - award. He comes with an incredible lovely fragrance and I expect the color of the blooms to become darker as the weather cools down, which makes this rose even more desirable. The bush is carrying quite some buds right now, so there is definitively something to look forward to.




'Moonstone', a Hybrid Tea rose, also showed some very nice flowers last month. This rose loves the heat! It never looked heat-stressed no matter how high the temperatures were rising. I truly can't say this of many of my roses.




Above you can see a bush shot of my 'Moonstone'. You might ask what is so exciting about it. Well, it is a Hybrid Tea rose growing on its own roots and it is the first one that I grew from a tiny band and planted in the ground. Hybrid Tea roses have a reputation to be finicky on their own roots, needing the support of a vigorous rootstock to be grafted on. I just planted 'Moonstone' into the White Garden Bed in the first quarter of this year and the bush has really taken off (if you want to see how the plant looked in April please click here and scroll down the post until you see the pictures of the rose bush). Right now 'Moonstone' is pretty clean, but it had its share of rust and powdery mildew.




'Charles Darwin', my most prolific producer of blooms in the month of September, even though this rose is still growing only in a container. I am seriously thinking of putting him in the ground to give him more leg room. I just have a feeling that this could be an outstanding rose in my garden.

'Stephen's Big Purple' another Hybrid Tea rose that did well in the heat. I just would have loved to see it more purple as the name indicates, but in hot weather the blooms are almost a garish deep hot pink. It is always a little bit of a gamble if you buy a rose that you have never seen in person...

This one on the other hand, 'Charles de Gaulle', which I also bought only after seeing photos of it, is a totally stunning rose in terms of the color and the fragrance. I think it is the "bluest" rose that I own. Unfortunately I might have lost it in the heat spell.

Even though I usually don't like orange roses I am in love with 'Halloween', another Hybrid Tea rose. The warm evening sun light seems to make the rose glow.




This picture of 'Halloween' was taken in the early morning light. What a difference! The perfume of this rose is very strong and delightful. I am curious to see if it will actually bloom on Halloween. The roses would be perfect to decorate the holiday table with on that day.




'Green Ice', a miniature is finally looking good! The photo shows probably the best spray that this rose ever produced in my garden. It is supposed to be healthy, but in my climate it is struggling awfully with powdery mildew. For unknown reasons it is also loved by ants. If you look more closely you see them crawling in the flowers. Yuk!

'Rhodologue Jules Gravereaux' is an incredible beautiful Tea rose, which produces one of the most elegant flowers that I have ever seen.



Here is a close-up of a single bloom of 'Rhodologue Jules Gravereaux'.

As usual I could count on 'Pierre de Ronsard' last month.

A very velvety bud of 'Mister Lincoln'.

An unfolding flower of 'Sir Henry Segrave', an older Hybrid Tea rose. I love the pale shade of yellow and the gracefully nodding blooms. Thanks Masha for talking me into this one!

After being fertilized 'Yolande d'Aragon' is responding with blooms. The legs of the rose are still n----, but the flowers are simply wonderful, so that little fault is forgiven.

'Pope John Paul II', another rose that I can really count on to continue to bloom in the heat.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my rose flowers from last month. Wishing you all a good start into the new week!

See you in the garden!

Christina

Breakfast in the Garden in September

Two weekends ago my husband and I were having a nice long breakfast in the garden and I thought I would like to share some photos of it with you. While my husband was making pancakes from scratch, I watered the garden like a mad woman (this is what I usually do here on the weekends of August and September) and tried to set the table nicely.

While I was placing our light weight tables and chairs in a position in the garden, where I wanted us to sit it occurred to me that it would be fun to re-evoke some memories of the beautiful visits to British gardens and landscapes, castles, and not to forget the many cream teas that we had. So I got some of the souvenirs out that we brought back with us from our last vacation in England and set the table with them.




I love, love, love the Union Jack cushion, which we bought at the very last minute at London Heathrow Airport, before we had to board the plane that took us back home.

This has nothing to do with England, but with fun. My husband bought this tropical fruit called Dragon Fruit to surprise me. I have never seen a thing like this before.

The color of the fruit flesh is simply amazing. Nothing is manipulated here with Photoshop, this is just as it naturally comes! The peel of the fruit is very interesting, too. It is easy to see how it got its name. The taste was a little disappointing to me, though. There was hardly any at all to detect for my taste buds.

My husband made a decent stack of pancakes, didn't he? He also prepared a delicious sauce out of blueberries, which you can see a tiny bit of in the left pitcher. In the right pitcher is simply maple sirup, which always goes well with pancakes.




 I couldn't wait to sit down and indulge myself. It all looked so tempting.







The lollipops were a nice welcome treat from the friendly owners of the second cottage that we rented in West Sussex on our last trip. We never bothered to try them, because I was expecting to find a hard candy like mass of something super sweet under the cute Union Jack wrapping (after all it was the time of the Queen's Jubilee), but to my surprise they were simply made out of decent milk chocolate! Yummy!




The motto of the mugs should just become mine! Love the crown and the dark blue color, one of my favorites!




Even early in the morning we discovered that the sun umbrella was desperately needed. It comes in handy that we have one that is portable (at least by my husband), so that we can move it wherever we would like to set up our tables in the garden.

Believe me, I enjoyed our little outdoor breakfast very much and was in a really good mood afterwards and I think my husband felt the same. It doesn't require that much of an effort to do and you can get so much out of it. I just can recommend that you should try it sometimes, too, if you are not already doing it.

See you in the garden!

Christina