Pink Promise Rose, Fairfield Glade, Tennessee. October 30, 2009.
One nice thing about living in Tennessee is that the growing season lasts longer than it does in Ohio. Even though it is the end of October we still have roses in bloom at the house.
I took the picture of this beauty, Pink Promise, yesterday (Friday). We have buds and blossoms on several other roses as well. I hope we can enjoy them before we get our first frost.
George looking up at About Face rose, Fairfield Glade, Tennessee. August 27, 2009.
Roses need sunshine. Roses love sunshine. Since we have lots of trees around our house, finding enough sunshine for our roses has been somewhat of a problem. We had to move our roses from the first bed we made because there was too much shade, but now we’ve got them in front of the house where they get as much sunshine as our yard can offer.
HOWEVER, one corner of one of the rose beds is shadier than the rest of the bed. To keep the symmetry of the bed I wanted to keep a rose there. I figured that the rose there would be okay.
A few weeks ago a new cane appeared on the rose. It grew and grew and grew. For a while I thought it might be a sucker from below the graft, but it looked like the other canes. It kept growing and growing. When I was about to give up on it, a bud appeared and then a blossom that belonged to the rose bush.
To put things in perspective in the photo above, I’m 6-foot four inches tall and am standing on the same level as the rose bush. And I’m looking UP at the blossom. That rose wanted sunshine and was going to get to it.
The picture below shows what this rose bush, About Face, looks like under more normal circumstances.
About Face rose, Fairfield Glade, Tennessee. June 2, 2009.
Roses in front of our house. June 12, 2009.
This is my post for the My World meme. It is hosted by Klaus, Ivar, Sandy, Wren, Louise and Fishing Guy. To see more of our world or to join and share your part of the world, click HERE.
My world often contains roses. The last of our roses bloomed this week, so I thought I would post this picture of the front of our house, showing almost all of our roses (two in containers on the extreme right didn’t get into the picture. We have 48 roses — 22 in the bed on the left of the driveway, 16 in containers, and 10 in the bed on the right.
Needless to say, these flowers are a big part of my world in the Spring and Summer.
Frederic Mistral Rose, Fairfield Glade, Tennessee. July 17, 2009.
The rose above is the newest rose in our garden, Frederic Mistral. It is also the last of our roses to bloom.
Actually, this rose has had a hard life. We ordered it this spring as a replacement for a rose that didn’t make it through the winter. So it got a fairly late start in the garden. About the time that it started to form buds, the deer decided to use it for a snack.
It recovered from that experience and again formed buds. This time the Japanese beetles used it for a snack. The beetles discovered the buds on a day we went to Hendersonville. The amount of damage Japanese beetles can do in a few hours is amazing.
But the bush finally produced a bud that was able to open! The color is a light pink, and the petals look like porcelain. As if that is not enough, Frederic Mistral is one of the most fragrant roses there is.
Japanese Beetles are Public Enemy Number One for rose growers. The beetles can devour a rose blossom faster than anything I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately I’ve never lived in an area that did not have Japanese beetles. It has been very warm here for the past few days and I have been checking for beetles each day. Yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon I found several eating away.
The insect known as Japanese beetles were first found in the U. S. in New Jersey in 1916. Until that time, they were known to occur only in Japan where it is not a major pest.
Adult beetles emerge from the ground and begin feeding on plants in June. Activity is most intense over a 4 to 6 week period beginning in late June, after which the beetles gradually die off. Individual beetles live about 30 to 45 days (unless I catch up with them first). The beetles are most active on warm, sunny days,and prefer plants that are in direct sunlight. It sounds as if they were designed to eat roses!
I do my best to get the beetles off our roses in the morning when they are relatively sluggish. I usually pick them off and squeeze . That seems to be as effective as any other method, but for some reason I can’t get Betsy to help me!
It looks like it will be an interesting few weeks.
By the way, I did not take the picture above — I found it on the web.
Our Big Rose Bed, Fairfield Glade. June 2, 2009.
If you have visited here on a regular basis you may be tired of hearing about and seeing roses. But Betsy and I enjoy them and enjoy growing them and we can’t help ourselves in wanting to share them. The picture above was taken Tuesday from the edge of our driveway. We rather like the view.
Wildfire Rose, Fairfield Glade. May 31, 2009.
When Betsy and I got home Saturday night from our trip to North Carolina we found the beauty above in our rose garden. Wildfire is one of our favorite roses, but I’m not sure any picture can do it justice. Wildfire is a red-orange-yellow blend and which color is dominant depends somewhat on the lighting.
But trust me — Wildfire is a beautiful rose.
Big Rose Bed, Fairfield Glade. May 23, 2009.
The picture above shows some of the roses in our large rose bed. That bed contains 22 roses, but not all of them have bloomed yet. But I can say that scenes like this make all the work very worthwhile.
Betsy and I are going to be visiting friends for a couple of days. Judy and Charlie have a cabin in the western North Carolina and we’re going over there later today. We met Judy and Charlie when Betsy and I lived in Hendersonville. They still live there, but we have remained close.
This visit is for relaxation and to give Betsy and Judy an opportunity to ‘talk’. Whether the talking will leave time for eating and sleeping remains to be seen.
I don’t think this trip will include any waterfall visits, although there are several in the area. I’m taking some reading and may even get in a nap or two.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
It’s so nice to wake up in the morning to blue skies, warm temperatures, birds singing and roses blooming. That was our situation yesterday (Friday) morning. Our roses are doing very nicely and we find new blossoms each morning. The collage above shows the roses that bloomed for the first time Friday. If you are interested in the names you can enlarge the collage and see most of them.
Rose New Day, Fairfield Glade. May 20, 2009.
Wednesday was an absolutely beautiful day up here on the Plateau — the sky was blue and the sun was shining. It was almost too warm in the afternoon to work in the yard, but that didn’t stop me. I thoroughly enjoy working in the yard even if that includes mowing, which I finished up early in the afternoon.
The most enjoyable chore I had to do was plant our last new rose. I had to replace one that we lost during the winter. So now our rose garden is complete — we have 48 rose bushes. That’s about all that we can handle without getting a larger yard!
The picture above is another of new roses this year — New Day. It is slightly fragrant as well as being very pretty. I have more trouble with yellow roses than any other color — they seem to be a favorite of just about every bug that likes to chew of rose bushes! However, we’re hoping that I can keep this one healthy.
Senior Moments 