Roses

I am a sucker for fragrant tea roses and add a new bush to the yard each year. These (in pic above) are from our garden. I stick my face right in them every day. June is the best month for the roses here; they receive the best amount of rain and sun, and the Japanese beetles have not yet emerged to chew them up.

Also in the garden are cluster roses (that's what I call them; I don't know their proper name); they emerge as a ready-made bouquet:

I mean: really. Put your face right in there.  Nice, mm?

Do you have a favorite flower?

A Good Summer for Roses


We've had a good combination of rain and sun here in western New York this summer, and the plant life is thriving.  The roses seem especially lush.  I swoon.

The Japanese beetles have descended upon the lone blackberry and raspberry bushes, though. Don't want to use the beetle traps which seem to attract more than they repel.  Any suggestions?

Fleurs

Fleurs

Tuesday, 30 June, 2009

The pink rose at bottom is, I think, a perfect rose, and it blooms today, June 30, which was my parents' anniversary. My father was an avid and proud gardener of both flowers and vegetables. His most prized flowers were tea roses and peonies; his most prized vegetables were big, red, beefy tomatoes.

My mother took pleasure in my father's gardens, perhaps especially because he did all the work: all the tilling of soil and planting and weeding. She had her hands full with us five children. We siblings were later pressed into weeding and trimming labors, and although we grumbled plenty, we are all appreciative gardeners as a result. None of us is as good at it as my father was, though.

Lately, I realized that I've been replicating the plants and trees of my childhood home: rhododendrons, azaleas, onions, tomatoes and herbs, maple and pear trees, and of course, peonies and roses, roses, roses.