Before and After

 

 

 

Like most gardeners, I like to play with flowers.

There are days when I have the luxury of taking 15min in my garden in the morning, kids away, house empty and I can pick up stuff like sweat peas that need picking in order to bloom more.

 

So I come upstairs with a bunch of fresh blooms and the next step is to play with them and transform that bunch into a decent looking flower arrangement that can be displayed on the livingroom table or around the house.

 

Here's the one for today, featuring:

 

The Dark Lady (my best guess for this rose)

Sweat peas

Cosmos geant sensation picotee

Fragrant dianthus

 

Pierre de Ronsard

This is such a lovely rose!

I love it even if it's not fragrant

(well, it does have a very light fragrace, but nothing extraordinary)

I love it even if its head drops and, in fact, I believe this makes it even more charming.

It has such a lush &healthy folliage and it produces so many blooms, that I simply cannot understand why some people dislike it.

 

The details given by a side-photo of the bloom make it so unique





 

And look at those romantic-fat-heavy blooms!

 It's "climbing" against an arch in my garden and this is only its second summer and it almost reached the top.
Too bad I don't have more space to let it evolve naturally - this is the only regret I have about growing this wonderful rose

Today's Roses on Instagram

This morning has been the second day without rain in a long line of winter-boots-cold days. This July has not really been a summer month, but rather an early spring month.

 

I took advantage of the warm-ish morning to go outside and smell the roses :)

I also felt the need to Instagram them and now I'm sharing that with you.

It's all David Austin roses this time

 

Lady Emma Hamilton

William Shakespeare 2000

Princess Alexandra of Kent

...and her again

Jubilee Celebration

Jude the Obscure

Graham Thomas

Most of them are in a bouquet in my living room now.
The most natural and delicious home deodorant
Jude the Obscure is officially awarded the prize for the most fragrant rose in my garden - the price being each blooms is cut as soon as it opens and places somewhere in the vicinity of my nose ;)

Munstead Wood

A few days ago, there was a question on a Facebook page I subscribed to about which David Austin rose one would be.
A silly game, I know, but it made me consider it.
At first, I thought there was no rose that represented me, that I could identify with, but recently I realised that there is one - Munstead Wood.

The one with the velvety petals, not a too orderly aspect, with an intense fragrant, but pretty well endowed thorn-wise :)

I took several photos of it this year, unfortunately not one at its peak blooming time, but you'll have to settle with these for the time being.

I've clearly not pruned the bush correctly, so it looks rather loose. It's still work in progress.

Here's the bush in late May

 and here it is in early June

And here it is again, in different stages, wet and dry, in all its gorgeous glory

 

Looking Back on Some June Blooms

Summer is here.

June has come and gone and summer holidays are close.

June was a busy month, when I was away, learning new things and when I returned, at the office and at home.

June also came with the roses's blooming peak. It was such a delight!

With so many things to do however, I failed to photograph them often enough.

I do have a few photos that show a part of this display.

 

Here's Brother Cadfael, such a great rose with an amazing fragrance.

This tiny white one with buds tinged of pink I suspect it's the Aspirin rose.

 

Here's a new addition to my garden - Jude the Obscure. It may well be the rose with the strongest fragrance in my garden although Lady Emma Hamilton is a strong competitor.

And speaking of Lady Emma, here're a few of her beautiful blooms.

She's such a perfect rose. Probably my very favourite ... oh, that's such a hard decision to make!

 

 

This is Artemis (Tantau) and it's very healty and it gives these smallish blooms of a very nice shape.

Alas, there is no fragrance and the spent blooms linger on and look ugly and ruin the overall aspect of this rose.

Near Brother Cadfeal, there is a combo of blues and pinks and whites. You can't see the pink cosmos here, but you can see geranium Rozanne and the gorgeous lavender.

These poppies are also planted by the Brother Cadfael rose bush. It's an annual poppy, partly self seeding, partly from seeds I collect and spread around.

I think it looks pretty fab :)

And this is the same poppy, taken from down by the grass and looking at a sunset