November Roses

This is a gift from my garden.
An unexpected one - fresh fragrant roses in November.

I took the photos in the evening dim light, so the focus might have tricked me here and there :)

Some Flowers at the End of July

I've finally managed to take a bit of time in the garden with my camera instead of just using my phone while gardening.

I love to take pictures using my cam, but I always have so little time for the garden that I rather use it to tend to it.

I could not afford spending that long in the garden so I can take pictures of every bloom, but I went here and here, to things that are most interesting to me right now.

In the flower beds in front of the house, there is one bed with roses planted by people who lived in this house before me and this year I added some seeds in between the rose bushes and now I've got, among other things, these beautiful corn flowers – I confess they are among my favourite wild flowers and I would love to have a patch full of them.

Also blue, and also a favourite, is this very pretty love-in-the-mist. I simply adore this plant – its delicate foliage, its jewellery-like blooms, the cute seed-heads...plus, it makes for a great companion to roses.

Next year I will certainly sow more seeds

I also have white ones

These drum-stick alliums are a bit of a disappointment, as they don't stand upright and they bold in a very anaesthetic way. I will dig them out once they're done blooming and dig them deeper and close together, maybe that'll work better because I really like their flower heads.

Now, back to the roses in front of the house - this one is such a beauty! It has absolutely perfect blooms, it's very floriferous and it smells divine.
I wish I knew its name...

This is Garten Traume, a rose bred in Germany by Tantau. I have it as a standard rose and this breeder also sells them quite cheap compared to David Austin or Meilland. The thing is, not all his roses are of a great quality, at least they're not showing it in their first year. Well, Garten Traume is a good one - a lot of blooms, repeats well and has a very nice strong fragrance. A couple of things I don't like that much - the branches are rather slim, so they cannot properly support the blooms and the flowers never completely open and simply wilt from one day to the next.

 This is my most recent David Austin (Jubilee Celebration) - I found it at a local nursery that sells DA roses and I absolutely fell in love. The blooms are something else - a very nice blend of appricot and pink and pointed petals in a very impressive number. I must take its picture when it is completely open, but with this heat, the flowers are spent quite quickly.

Taking you back to the front of the house, another rose I found when I moved in is this one, that I identified as David Austin's Pilgrim. It formed a small climber, without a support to climb on, so this year it kind of fell to the ground – not a success from the point of view of its shape, but a profusion of blooms that made several nice bouquets.

Now it's all pruned and I can already see some new shoots.

And this is a present from the birds that I feed - they "planted" several suflowers around the garden. Although most of them are not in the right places, I will keep them all and let them turn to seed so the birds can take advantage of them once again.
Aren't they just amazing flowers?

The Pilgrim?

When we moved into this house, I was pleased to see that I 'inherited' 10 rather old rose bushes. They were not in such a great shape, as they had been neglected for at least 3 years and only given some autumn pruning, not exactly the best type of pruning, as it can leave them exposed to the winter frosts. As a consequence, they were mostly dead wood and I really thought some of them were just that. I removed the weeds around them and gave them some additional pruning removing all the dead wood I could remove and, as it was spring, I gave them a bit of rose food. They all rewarded me with their blooms, even those that seemed dead somehow found enough resources to send new shoots with flowers. Maybe the best of them (with close competition from a purple one I will discuss in another post) was this bush, one that cam easily be trained as a climber, at least if it is exposed south-west.

It's a rather tall bush (about 2m) with shiny dark folliage and repeat bloom. It bloomed once in June and again in August and, ever since, it has been bearing a couple of flowers all the time. Even now, there is one bloom and one bud and it's sending very tall shoots, which I will most likely prune, as I cannot afford having it so tall where it is right now - the house entrance. The flower looks a lot like David Austin's Pilgrim, with a pale yellow center and even paler yellow on the outer petals. It also has a strong smell which I love, but my nose is not trained enough to identify various scents. I hope, after the next summer season, to be able to identify it better by comparison to the fragrances of my labelled roses. Here are a few pictures from back in June:

The flowers have many petals and they open into a quartered rosette. They carry their fragrance from the bud stage and into the stage when they are almost spent.