Roses: The Which and the How, No Need to Explain the Why.

Post 38

Happy Rosetime.

I grew up scared of roses.

Out on Long Island in the 60's, roses were either beautifully wild at dunes' edge or hybrid tea roses that needed to be fussed over, if not fussed over they decayed. Plus, the white ones my parents grew were old sock white by the second day of their 5 day, once a year, bloom.

I had no idea how easy it would be to grow these reblooming beauties ( including the rose at the top of the post. (And yeah--both readings work.))

These are not my best roses.  These are the dead-easy roses that gave me confidence to try other roses. These are all Knock-Out Roses in blush pink, yellow, coral and red. They are as likely to be sold at box stores as at nurseries. They have been joined by a new series with "carpet" in the title, and I have high hopes for pretty 'Amber" below. All these need is 5 hours of sun a day, average water, a wack back in March, followed by another after first bloom. If you throw in mulch, compost and/or Rose-Tone, you will be amply rewarded

A slightly more difficult but lovey climbing rose came with the house, though she was growing in a part of the back yard that no longer gets much sun. I transplanted her to the side of the house and still do not know her name. She gets black spot every year as summer turns humid, but my lack of fussing and spraying has not lessened her ardor. She remains a doer.

So, after these,  was I ready to advance into higher rosedom?  Well, ready or not, I did. And Anglophile that I am, it was, of course, right into David Austin Roses.

One day, end-of-season, I saw a droopy, neglected rose on sale called Christopher Marlowe. Taking him home, I gave him as much amended Golden Rule love as I could, for which he thanked me eloquently with blooms like this--red at bursting, then pink with golden tangerine tinges, sorta Elizabethean psychadelic.  

And--after I saw that I hadn't managed to kill Kit ( he can suffer from non-lethal blackspot thou,) I added Grace, and at full price too. She is achingly comely.

She goes well with Kit, who, lets face it, always needed some kind of Grace. I'd like to add Will soon.

And those roses I mentioned earlier, the ones at dunes' edge that I'd loved as a kid? They were/are species Rugosa Roses, which are hardy and easy. They will grow almost anywhere--including this cultivar in my yard.

So--that's almost all my roses for now. 

Well-till at the Ned Wolf Plant sale I saw Theresa Buget, a Canadian rose without real thorns but with almost ferny foliage and spun sugar blooms (see left.) I'm trying her in the sunniest part of my backyard, since I'm running out of space in the sunny front yard. Which only means I need a bigger sunny front yard! 

I hope I have quieted any rose fears. Roses are really no more difficult than most plants, slightly heavier feeders maybe, but that is easy to provide. And one last basic but important rule: when you are pruning, always cut just above the node of a stem that has five leaves on it: never 3, always 5. Do that and all will be, not only hunky-dory, but also more sweet-smelling than you could have imagined.

Roses in February

Post 25

It may be warm,  but it is bleak and the garden, well... see what I mean.

I need a rose.

Yes, that helps. It is not easy to write a gardening blog in these months, especially if you want to avoid the usual winter cliches. Looking at the local architecture that holds up our gardens, cradles and rocks them, is a partial solution, but not an entirely gratifying one. The light is hard, the buildings unsoftened. I need more roses.

Yes, better.  One of the drawbacks of bleakness, which feels like nature's boredom, can be a lack of solid inspiration. And without real inspiration I may start to extravagate (no, not a word but should be (OED--pay attention! (Like Auden, one of my dream aspirations is to coin a new word and get it credited there; unlike Auden, it's a dream aspiration.))) To clarify, to extravagate means to unthinkingly exaggerate to a point almost past truth (though a kernel remains.) It lacks malice but remains an easy temptation for those of us who are of imagination a bit too compact. Itself an example of extravagation, it is a word that I made up in High School without realizing I'd made it up. I extravagantly extravagated exaggeration into extravagate. 

In short, in my last post I extravagated. I dissed mansions and castles. I do not really dislike them, just the more money than taste ones. 

And now, keeping on theme,(yes, there is a theme,) I am going to slip back towards an earlier post, "Roses in January," and fill in some information I did not include in the earlier post on The Red Rose Girls.

Below is a picture of Cogslea that shows more of the house and less of the caryatids.

And here's one of Cogshill from the back

The pergola at Cogshill.

And here is a relevant illustration from Elizabeth Shippen Green's scrapbooks at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Last of all. I want to credit the source of most of my information on The Red Rose girls. It is the book,  The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love by Alice A. Carter, ISBN 978-0810944374.

And I also want to add a caveat, that this is an informal blog. Like informal correspondence and other forms of informal writing, such a blog is not meant to be read as a solid reference source. I try to be accurate but I do not fact check everything. For instance, I made a mistake about Edith Emerson in my earlier RRG post. I have gone back and corrected it as I value accuracy.  At times however, I can find even myself a bit too transported by the act of writing, and end up extravagating reality's rose into a slightly stranger flower. So please, take this with a grain, though not a bucket, of salt. I know I do.

Hostas and the Funkia of Scenic Decay

Post 10


It is easy, but unproductive, to imagine the garden as an idyllic Eden beyond time's throes.  There is no garden without time. Gardens are made of time

How I wish I had taken pictures a few winters ago when a heavy frost hit the uncut-back garden. A pale hosta, which had remained in leaf, wilted overnight, its fronds decayed into ghost leaves. The limp leaves, which fell away from their roots to splay out in a circle, had gone greyish white.  Unhappy at the time, I'd gathered them up and hung them from the bishop's hooks behind the Buddha. For a day or two they dangled there, tokens of decay, translucent, beautiful and properly sad.

In my carpool this week, I told a colleague how I like to let some plants visibly decay, while removing others--it all depending on how attractive the decay is. Since she is a new gardener, she asked me when to cut back her plants, most especially her hosta. It made me remember the ghost leaves, and note how a popular 19th century plant like hosta, once called funkia, remains perpetually in style. Every year there are new varieties while the old ones remain ubiquitous. Everyone, it seems, has some funk.
  


What other factors, I wondered, can make for good garden funk, a bit of scenic decay?

A surge of fresh roses blooming beneath a turning tree.

A scattering of fallen rose petals on a stone staircase.

                                 

"You love the roses - so do I.  I wish the sky would rain down roses, as they rain from off the shaken bush.  Why will it not? Then all the valley would be pink and white And soft to tread on.  They would fall as light as feathers, smelling sweet; and it would belike sleeping and like waking, all at once!"  -  George Eliot, Roses 

The froth of spent flowerheads nuzzled by a strand of Kiss-Me-Over-The-Garden-Gate

Fading flower of Oak Hydrangea against turning leaves and an Autumn Joy sedum blooming in a cute thrift-store vase .



Or how about the sight of zinnias with new blooms, mature blooms, and old blooms all in one gaze?





Pastorius Park

 In our culture such a huge amount of resources: time, money and effort, is spent erasing time. And to what end? To deny that in the long run there is only one end for mortal creatures?  One cosmetic company is now developing a pill to keep your hair from turning grey. Only drawback--you have to take it for at least 10 years before your hair starts turning, and then, for how many years after? What's next, some soil additive to keep tree leaves from turning color and falling in autumn? To erase time erases life, erases change, erases us.
.

Pastorius Park

My perennial question behind this blog -- how does gardening change the gardener? --has perhaps one answer. Gardening embeds us in time. Most of our common culture does the opposite--it disembodies us into spectators while erasing time. By gardening we partner and co-operate with time.


Hence we learn through our bodies' labors that sometimes it is better and more graceful to accede to time's reality. To trust to something beyond our self-gratifying egos.  And so to let the leaves, all the leaves, fall where they may.

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How-to Hosta:  Hostas are originally native to China.  From there they were brought to Japan and Korea, and then, from there, in the mid-19th-century, to the Western world. Older versions make great groundcovers for shade and semi-shade. They come in all sizes, from smaller than an unabridged dictionary to bigger than a multi-cushioned sofa, but most end up at about 3 X 3. They also come in all shades and varigations of green, white, chartreuse and a waxy blue-green.  Some of the newer varities can take sun: most others will get leaf burn. They love our local clayey soil, sending down deep roots to deal with dryish shade. To make more plants just divide in spring or fall; small plants will fill in quickly. Be sure to keep watered for a few weeks after transplanting. Hosta are tough, adapatable, low care plants. So --  Enjoy your funk ( just, as they say, don' impose it on others.)