Ring Around a Rosey!

We got some rain this past week and the roses are all in bud and/or blooming like crazy! And for our enjoyment and edification I will be including info from the Antique Rose Emporium which is in Brenham TX, but has a catalog and ships roses to individuals and nurseries all over the US. I got several antique roses that were grown by them at a local nursery which has since closed. Oh, and several of my roses come via mail-order from Chamblee's Roses which is in the Rose Capital of Texas: Tyler (also in East Texas). We are going to take a long day trip tomorrow for wild-flower viewing and a huge antique/craft show festival that takes place in several towns between here and Houston, and since we will be in the area, I think we may try to stop by there. Himself does not know this yet, and I will definitely have to keep a tight schedule of photography and antiquing if I hope to succeed...

Here's my 'Souvenir de Malmaison':


A Bourbon Rose, from 1843. "Originally known as ‘Queen of Beauty and Fragrance’ this rose received its present name when one of the Grand Dukes of Russia obtained a specimen from the gardens at Malmaison for the Imperial Garden in St. Petersburg. ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ produces large, flat, quartered blossoms with petals of pale, almost flesh colored pink, and a delightful fragrance. The compact bush rarely grows more than three feet, seemingly spending all its energy on blooming rather than growing."



This is 'Distant Drums':

It's a shrub rose hybridized in the '80's by Griffith Buck, but I have a thing for lavender/brownish and two-tone roses. This as you can see has a cafe au'lait-ish center and lavender outer petals. The buds are exquisite. It's also scented--supposedly like myrrh, kinda spicy-sweet. I'm sure I got this from Chamblee's but they don't appear to carry it any more.

Last weekend I moved an arbor over in the Rose-Herb garden so it would support both 'Buff Beauty' (which sadly is not blooming yet) and 'Safrano' pictured here. That one is going nuts with the canes and the blooms, and I'm pretty sure it's not a climbing rose, so color me surprised that its canes are both longer and more abundant than 'Buff Beauty' ever since I planted them. I must fertilize 'Buff' more so it will catch up... Anyway, toward the left of the shot is the left arc of the green metal arbor to which I tied some canes, but there was also a big one shooting straight out in front that I pushed back out of the walking path with a trellis. I really should cut that one all the way back, but it had so many buds I figured I'd wait till it bloomed. Iris in the foreground came with the house.

Here's a closer look at some of the 'Safrano' blooms along with 'H.F. Young' clematis:

This is a Tea rose from 1839 (please note--this is not the same as a Hybrid Tea, which is a modern variety, many of which have been bred for shape and color of blooms to the detriment of scent and disease-resistance). " Though its parents are unknown, ‘Safrano’ is recorded by Roy Shepherd as 'the result of the first successful attempt to control parentage by hand pollination,' thereby introducing a new era in rose breeding. This rose has double, well scented flowers of bright fawn, with long-pointed buds. It was once described exhibiting 'lovely buds of sunset coloring... saffron to apricot in the bud, changing to pale buff... A pretty and hardy variety, worthy of a place in every collection...'."

The hummingbird feeder hung on that arbor has been very popular this week:

This is a female. We get black-chinned hummingbirds first (the males have a black band around the neck at the height of the chin and a deep purple spot on their throat) followed by ruby-throated, but the females of both have white/gray throats and are almost identical.

I'll try to get a picture of the 'Mutabilis' bush up here in the next couple of days; it didn't have a whole lot of open blooms earlier in the week. It's a climber and the longest canes were always falling off the fence, so I got another arbor and attached the longest ones to one side (they go almost to the top), and to the other side of the arbor I attached some really long canes of a dark red hybrid tea that my mother-in-law planted. From the looks of it, it may be a climber, but I dunno--it's not as vigorous in spreading out like 'Mutabilis' or the white climbing hybrid tea she planted out front ('John F. Kennedy') so it may just be a function of a relatively tall bush that I haven't pruned much...