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The Garden—July 2008
July 30, 2008  

Here is just a wonderful view of the gazebo looking north. Even with the debris in the path and the lack of surfacing, it looks good. Also notice how clear the sky is after a month of fires.

It is a relief to have blue sky again, but the fear of fire never leaves. We have enlarged our fire ring several times this month, and my assistant weed-whacks every couple of weeks to keep weeds cut to the ground.

Here is a beautiful Just Joey flower. This is such a great rose and justifiably popular. Peach colored roses are probably my favorites, although I love them all and this rose is one of the best.

Here is Susan Louise. This rose has such pretty flowers, but once they open—that’s it—they are gone. They only last for a couple of days either on the bush or in a vase. This plant will get quite large. Notice how big it has already grown from the severe prune I gave it in preparation for moving it from the old garden. This winter, I will just cut it back a little and let it get big.

I plan to put in a lot more roses this fall and some of them will be old roses which get haystack sized. I will need to space them around the garden appropriately so they fit comfortably in scale with the space.

Here is one of the Baby Blankets brought from the old garden. I thought I had two more in tubs but those have proved to be another rose called Floral Carpet. Both of these roses are groundcover roses and tend to self root because their canes often touch the ground.
President Macia had a gorgeous rose on it today. This rose is fluffing out pretty well for starting out so small and tender. It was donated to the Heritage Rose Foundation auction by a member and I don’t have any idea how old it is, but I would bet not more than a year.
Fragrant Cloud is going through another bloom cycle.
This is one of my original roses which was supposed to be Just Joey but if you compare it to the flower up above, you will see that this rose was mislabeled. I am not sure whether this was root-stock run amuck or just mislabeled. The nursery it came from had a reputation for mislabeling, so it may be some other perfectly legitimate rose.
This photo doesn’t do this rose justice. It is one of the hedge made from the miniatures I saved from pots last year. Earlier in the year, this rose and its mates were so covered with mildew and the flowers so shriveled, I almost pulled these plants out. The heat has seemingly given them a new lease on life, because they look wonderful now and are pumping out flowers in huge numbers.
We are slowly retrieving all the straw bales used for erosion control last year and spreading them as mulch here and up above. The best straw is this quite rotted stuff because it stays down when the wind blows. The partial decay has matted it together and made it less prone to fly away in the wind.
July 23 & 25, 2008  

I haven’t been taking many pictures of the garden since the arbor was completed, mostly because there s so much happening in the house that I have not been able to get down here very much. Here is a recent view from the north end of the arbor. The smoke from all the fires is still very thick, although the camera makes the sky look bluer than it actually is. The roses are all happily chugging along. With their straw mulch and sprinklers, the are loving the hot weather.

Very soon, we will make another big move and bring a lot of pots, garden decor and furniture from the old garden. Many of the pots will be used in the courtyard, but there also are a bunch of miniature roses which will go in the ground down here.

From the dock, here is a view of the arbor. Once the sycamores fill out and are pollarded, this will be a very elegant view.
Jim has not put his boat in the water this year because of all our many projects getting ready to move. I haven’t ever tried to row it, although I will probably use it in the future to manage some of the pond plants.
The pond is starting to look a little scummy, although some of what you see on the surface is actually pond plants—duckweed et al.
Here is one of the persistent roses which grew from a root left in the soil when we transplanted one of the roses out of its tub. We decided to rescue these hardy shoots and now they have their own pots and sprinklers.
We have a few tomatoes on our one tomato plant. It is in a tub and hopefully next year, we will have veggie beds in. I anticipate a big push this fall after we are moved in to build the beds for our future vegetable garden.
July 9, 2008  
Here is the gazebo shot over the top of the French Lace and China Doll standards. My new idea of having the standards fan out diagonally from the gazebo is almost realized, although they are a little out of line. The ones on the other side will have to be moved but I will probably not bother with these.
Looking toward the bottom of the garden, you see here, again, French Lace and China Doll, and the arches—formerly the neck of the arbor.
The French Lace is such a different color than it was in the spring! It is now quite ecru. My friend who gave me this rose really wanted an ecru rose and was very disappointed in the color. She would be quite bitter to see these photos because this color is just what she wanted.
Here we are looking from the top of the garden in the white section toward the south. The sky is still smoky although it is not so bad today because of the wind.
Looking northwest through the gazebo gives you a good view of one of the benches with a back. I decided to only have two benches with backs—those on the east side. Putting backs on the west side would have obscured too much of the view.
This is an unknown yellow miniature with Peace behind it. The miniature is glad to be out of its pot and in the ground and Peace is doing so much better that it looks like a different rose. Jim gave me this rose years ago after a big fight and I have always cherished it although I could never quite see why it was such a best seller. I am glad it is finally happy.

I think this is Tamara, a rose I just had for a year before moving them all here.

They have a spectacular hedge of these roses around the temple at the Huntington Library in southern California, so I knew this rose would do well in a hot, dry climate.

Magic Lantern is another hybrid tea which has always done well, but even this rose is putting on a tremendous show this year.
The low rose engulfed in nasturtiums is Medallion and behind it is our miracle rose with the broken trunk, Playboy. The nasturtiums are doing so well, I have decided to buy some seeds and see if we can fill up some of the empty space in the beds temporarily.

This rose, Just Joey, is a big seller and rightfully so. Unfortunately, my bush has mosaic, which is a virus that causes the leaves to only have pigment in some places. This weakens the rose, but probably won’t kill it unless it gets otherwise stressed. My understanding is that the virus was transmitted to the rose via the root-stock. This year, I do not see any mosaic on this rose at all.

Here is a better shot of Playboy well into its second big bloom. My assistant wants to remove the cast to see how the trunk is doing, but I said no until next week when we will bring new cast materials with us, in case we need to put a new one on.
Here is a good view of one of the little braces and a bench on the gazebo.
The northeast bench frames the house pretty nicely. The blue tarp in the background is covering spare wood. We need to take that up above to the wood pile so it stops being such an eyesore.
This is Radway Sunrise, doing another round of heavy blooming.
Royalty and the unknown red are now behind the northeast bench. They seem to like the hot sun so much, I hope this more sheltered location doesn’t do them harm. If so, I may have to move them.
The rose on the left is Dallas and the one on the right is Cocktail. Cocktail is a rambler that will be trained to climb up the post of the gazebo.
President Macia has had two new blooms and added some foliage since I last photographed it. Despite its small size, it does seem to be doing well.
This is another new rose for me, Iceberg. It looks a lot different than I thought it would, probably because I am used to seeing it in the climbing form.
Gourmet Popcorn, another miniature is looking more dense than it did in its old location. This has always been a good performer and is keeping up the good work here as well.
From in front of the dining room, the garden is starting to look like something—although as noted above, we have got to get the wood covered with the blue tarp out of the arbor. Once I get surfacing in for the paths and more roses, this is really going to look great.
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