Bringing the Roses In

A couple days of rain in the forecast caused me to grab the pruning sheers and bring a bunch of my roses in. I've never cut this many from the garden at once. May just be my imagination, but I don't think I've ever had this many blooming at once to have to bring in. I am so happy to have them inside with me! This vase, a tall crystal one on my dining room table, includes Sexy Rexy, Bonica, Champlain, Blaze, Christopher Marlowe, Windermere, The Fairy, Golden Celebration, and Hot Cocoa.

Bringing in roses always reminds me of my grandma, who has always has small vases of her huge southern california roses on nearly every table in the house. Every event warrants roses, even if I'm visiting for the 3rd time that week, or it happens to be Saturday. Any ceremony she brings a cluster of roses wrapped in foil and papertowels.

This vase is on my coffee table, and it includes Dream Come True, Brother Cadfael, Bonica, and Disneyland roses.

Someday, I dream of having multiple bushes of each of these roses, so vases like this can be in each room, while the garden will look untouched.
Happy Gardening!

My front border in full bloom!

I'm beaming with pride over the way my front border, planted last spring, has responded to my doting. I made sure to prune well, feed on schedule, and pull weed after weed, and the result has been traffic stopping, literally. One lady yelled out the car window! Beside all the positive feedback, my favorite part is seeing the bees and hummingbirds, smelling the roses I've been loving caring for for so long now. Just happy to the core. I don't wanna be weird and pull up a chair in the driveway, but I really don't want to leave the site of it. lol.  Enjoy!

Where I get my green thumb.

This April we visited my mom and grandma, who live together in southern California in the closest place I have to a childhood home. The whole visit was so fulfilling. There's something soothing about having endless downtime just sitting on the patio I played Barbies on nearly every day of my childhood. I didn't take out my make-up bag the whole visit. I didn't work in the yard (with my mom and brother's girlfriend working on the garden, there were NO weeds to pull). We all brought the kids to hot spots, including Disneyland and Legoland, but mostly we hung out, and ate great food. It was relaxing, and vacation-like. :) The best part? My mom and grandma's gardens have meshed once more, and that meant so many roses- that happened to be in FULL bloom. Heavenly timing, if you ask me! Here are my best shots from the visit:

 I love this succulent planter! I brought my mom sedum 'angelina' years ago, and she's paired it with some euphorbia, sedum burro's tail, ghost plant, paddle plant, a fuzzy echeveria (I think) and more... in the perfect rusty white metal basket. I should have snatched this whole thing up and brought it home. lol.
 
 How amazing is Cecile Brunner in full bloom? Wonderful enough that I wanted to sleep outside on the side of the house. Instead I brought in a vase full for the Easter table.

 Some of this kalanchoe came home with me.

 I also broke off some pieces of this medusa plant, and the kangaroo paw... and later grandma sent my son Benjamin the baby cactus in here.

 More roses, surely some of the one's I learned to prune on as a child.

 And nothing says home like bougainvillea.

More roses...

Lovely, lovely trip.

I'm turning into my mother.

My mom has had a long time love affair with all things pink. When I was a little girl she loved "Dusty Rose," so naturally my snotty little butt despised it. I rejected all things pink. Now, I have furniture painted in pink, I can't find enough clothes with pink roses on them... and looking into my garden there's pink EVERYWHERE. My mom's favorite rose, of course, is David Austin's Mary Rose, in full bloom now:

 

Other pinks in the garden today include this gold flame honeysuckle:

This big pink azalea that was here when I moved in:

Pale pink painted daisies:

Rose, Distant Drums: 

Columbine, McKana's Giant, from seed, changes from pinky to orchid purple as the blooms ripen.  

Coral Bells pink blooms during a rare moment without a hummingbird feeding of them:   

Peony:

The name of this rose in unknown, as I acquired it at a yard sale in nothern Wisconsin, but it is a beauty, and in just a few years it has grown so large.

I am surely becoming my mother, but its not so bad.