Who would've thought it?

16 years ago

Our rose season has begun. As usual in our garden, the Chinas are leading the way: Old Blush and Spice are in full bloom, followed by the first flowers of Sanguinea; now Mme. Alfred CarriÃ¨re has a few pale, sweetly scented roses open, and I saw the first blossom, very double and quite fine, on Mme. Antoine Mari. Well. All that drought last summer; the cane canker and dieback. Drought in December, January, February, March, sun and wind and warmth and watering the baby roses when Nature ought to have been doing it for us. The inch of rain a month not doing anything to replenish the aquifers, cracks opening in the ground. Now it's April, and for the first time this year it's raining generously, and we're having weather appropriate to the month.

Do you know what? The roses look splendid! They're full of buds and strong new growth and look magnificent and cheerful at the same time, the way roses do. Wandering around admiring things today I picked a bloom from Old Blush. Normally I think of Old Blush as a mass of determined pink, a rose to admire for its toughness and floriferousness rather than for the quality of its individual flowers. This bloom, however, is four inches across, double, with ruffled petals, and as shapely as a camellia. And it's good and fragrant as well. I saw Old Blush produce flowers like this once before in my garden, 2005 perhaps, a year of wonderful roses. The rain means we ought to have a great hay crop in May (affordable mulch!). The garden is beginning, at last, to look like a garden. Who would've thought it?

Melissa

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Comments (6)

rosefolly
16 years ago
Glad to hear you're finally getting some decent rain. It is long overdue and you have waited so patiently. Congratulations on your happy roses.

I've been worrying about the garden, too. Two years in a row of less-than-average rain, though not deep drought, and I become concerned. But for some reason, perhaps because it has been very cool, perhaps because of good, deep mulches, or perhaps just the random generosity of nature, the garden is blooming its head off this year. It is as pretty as I can remember it ever being. I even posted pictures on the gallery. I almost never do that.

We may get light showers later today. I'll take them happily. I'm not proud. If it is water and it falls from the sky, it is good.

Rosefolly
rjlinva
16 years ago
Melissa,

I enjoyed reading your comments on Old Blush. I came inside about an hour ago after gazing at my Clmbing Old Blush in amazement at how incredibly beautiful it looks this year. The flowers are larger and more romantic (if I can use that term loosely). They have grace and substance that I hadn't noticed before. This is usually the harbinger of my roses (after the early yellows and the Lady Banks). This is a rose I think everyone should have, if they can grow it in their climate.

Robert
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Here's an idea, how about skipping overpriced, artificially colored, artificially fragranced garbage (that's probably made in Southeast Asia where worker protection regulations are nonexistent) in favor of a product made from real flowers, seedpods, spices, cones, etc. :-) :-) :-) Heaven only knows what these petrochemically-based fragrances are doing to us in the long term, stick to the natural stuff! Potpourri is ridiculously easy to make, too. A stoned chimpanzee could make this stuff: dump a bunch of ingredients in a bucket and stir, then measure into bags or jars. I pretty much never even add essential oils because the flowers and herbs and such smell good enough on their own! I have often made big bags for holiday/hostess gifts - I order my materials from a wholesaler (Atlantic Spice; for you folks west of the Mississippi hit their sister company San Francisco Herb Co. - both companies have a minimum order of $30 but I NEVER have a problem reaching that since they also have food items, containers, and all sorts of other things) and it ends up being almost obscenely cheap per gift. I'm talking spending under $50 gets me two to three 5-gallon buckets of potpourri, and the materials last ages if the bags are tightly sealed. I have a box of potpourri supplies - rosebuds, lavender flowers, juniper berries, cedar roses, all kinds of lovely things - in my guest room that's at least three years old and if you open the box it's like WHAMMO! Fragrance city. With the same materials I can make lavender and/or rose dryer bags (who needs dryer sheets to make your clothes smell nice!), sneaker tamers, dream pillows, sachets, etc. I don't care much for the reed thingies because if you tip one over you've got a really major mess on your hands, but Atlantic Spice does carry the materials to make your own - the reeds, base oil, and essential oils. A basic recipe to start out with is 1 tsp essential oil to 1/4 cup of the base oil, adjusting the amount of EO as desired. Dip the reeds in the oil and flip them over, reinserting them into the bottle. If you don't want to purchase diffuser base oil by itself (heck, you can probably get it at Michaels these days) you can use the deodorized liquid paraffin sold in candle stores for use in oil candles, but be careful to keep your diffuser away from heat/flame sources because the stuff is seriously flammable. You do want to flip your reeds every so often and replace them if they're no longer wicking up your scented oil.
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Pretty flower. i have a red double that I have had four years. I finally get three buds and they fell off ,I put in cup of water...nothing. You are lucky
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ingrid_vc so. CA zone 9
16 years ago
Melissa, you're whetting my appetite with your descriptions of the wonderful roses you're having this spring. May we please see photos some time? You have so many great varieties, and it would be so enjoyable to actually see them.

Ingrid
mendocino_rose
16 years ago
I'm so glad after all that you have been through that you are having a beautiful spring. It's amazing how this can happen. I think it's why we just keep at it in our gardens.
michelle_co
16 years ago
You know, their hardiness has to be a reason that our grandmothers and great-grandmothers were able to grow them. :-) I know my great-grandmother wasn't standing at the handpump all summer and carrying the roses each a 5 gallon bucket of water every week... They had to be tough and to stand the test of time, they had to be beautiful. Can you imagine someone making room on the wagon train to carry an ugly rose westward? :-))))

Cheers,
Michelle
melissa_thefarm
Original Author
16 years ago
Absolutely right, Michelle; and imagine how incredibly precious those roses must have been to the pioneers. I knew my roses would make it; I just wasn't ready to see them looking like they'd had tiptop perfect weather for the last six months. The aquifer could run dry, but if the roses got a thunderstorm once or twice a month through the warm weather, they'd probably be perfectly happy.

Robert, your Old Blush might behave differently than mine, but in my roses' case this happens only in certain years when conditions are particularly favorable. I remember I had wonderful flowers on Clementina Carbonieri that year as well. The first open flower on Mme. Antoine Mari is very double and has good substance.

Paula, Pam, thanks for your good wishes! I hope we all have wonderful gardens this spring.

Ingrid, I'm planning on doing so, just studying how to do so. I take it that I need to upload photos to PhotoBucket or some similar website? I'm not crazy about putting my photos out for all the world to see, even though I don't doubt they'll be lost amongst all the billions (literally) of pics posted, but I guess I have to. I've been taking photos recently, am not much of a photographer, and find it hard to capture the beauty of this place. At least people who are curious will have some idea of what our project looks like. One day when someone who's good with a camera comes to visit, we'll be able to show some good pictures.

Melissa

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