Flowers on Friday: My First Old Garden Rose ... and a Giveaway.

Portland from Glendora.  This is the rose that started the out-of-control collection that is my rose garden.

In the fall of 2002, two of my garden friends were going to Sherando Roses (outside Waynesboro, Virginia), and they invited me to come along.  I didn't grow roses at the time, because I had almost no sunshine at the house I was living in.  We had just bought this property where I am now, with its 9 acres of sunny old-farm soil, and my friends decided that I should grow roses.

This was Sherando.

I say "was" because the owner retired three years ago and closed the nursery.  It was the loss of Sherando (our only old-rose source in the whole area) that prompted me to open Hartwood Roses ... but I digress.

"Portland from Glendora" was one of three roses that I brought home with me from that first-of-many trips to Sherando.  (The other two were Frau Dagmar Hartopp and R. Eglanteria.)

I noticed "Glendora" blooming in the Rose Field while I was out on my beetle hunt on Wednesday.  This got me distracted (so what else is new) and I started photographing her beautiful pink flowers in the perfect overcast light that afternoon.

"Glendora" is a big girl.  She wants to be about six feet tall, and she supports herself quite nicely.

She is a Portland rose ... a small class of roses developed in the second quarter of the 19th Century.  Like other Portlands, "Glendora" smells WONDERFUL!  She gets a bit of blackspot, so a little fungicide is probably necessary to keep her looking her best.

Now to the Giveaway part of today's post.  One lucky Hartwood Roses reader will win "Portland from Glendora" for their own garden.

To enter, simply post a Comment here and tell me about something in your garden that makes you happy.  No need to become a follower (though I would sincerely appreciate it if you do).

This giveaway will end at 11:00 pm EDT, on Thursday, June 25.  I will announce the winner during Friday Flowers here on June 26.


(Because this is a giveaway for a live plant, there are a few little 'fine print' issues that I have to address. I am not licensed to ship to CA, OR, WA, AZ, AK, HI, or anywhere outside the US.  I have a lovely alternate prize if someone from one of these states is the winner.)

Fertilizer Friday

Remember, I have cancelled tomorrow's on-site nursery hours because I have to go out of town to attend a funeral for a friend who passed away last week.  Regular hours resume on Saturday, June 26th, from 10am - 3pm.

Be sure to visit tomorrow, when I unveil our Family Room for the 'Where Bloggers Create' feature.

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog.)

Going on a Beetle Hunt

Yesterday, Carolyn Parker of Rose Notes asked if I would please send her a photo of a Japanese Beetle.  She doesn't have them in California, and she needs a photo of one for a blog post she's working on.  Since I'm such a generous soul (grin), I was happy to oblige.

"Portland from Glendora"

I saw my first beetle this year on Friday, June 4, and I have only seen a few dozen since then.  There still relatively few in the garden today, almost two weeks later. 

Mlle. Augustine Guinnoisseau

Many of the ones I found were happily in the process of making more beetles for next year.

Pink Gruss an Aachen

Chief Seattle

Others were still single, probably biding their time till a suitable mate could be found.

Shot Silk

They tried, but they couldn't hide from me.

Madame Abel Chatenay

Compassion

The name of the rose in the photo above is quite ironic, considering I had no compassion for any of the beetles I saw.  There is great satisfaction to be had from the 'crunch' of squishing these nasty critters. 

Tomorrow should be a good day to teach the Grandson my favorite garden game of skill ... using a chopstick to knock beetles into a jar of soapy water.  You can bet that his proud grandmother will be right there with her camera to document the whole thing. 

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog.)

Waging War on Weeds

Some of my rose beds are being overrun by weeds.  Battling these weeds feels like a full-time job right now.  It's warm and sunny most of the time, and we have had ample rain ... creating conditions where the weeds can thrive.  I'm not sure I've ever seen so many types of weeds before.

I spent 5 minutes outside with my camera, waiting for the schoolbus this afternoon, and I found:

Crab Grass,

Bermuda Grass,

Poke Weed,

Ground Ivy,

Creeping Woodsorrel,

Dandelion,

White Clover,

Morning Glory,

Purple Deadnettle,

some weed I haven't identified yet, and lots more. 

I won't even begin to list the weeds that grow in the Rose Field.  It's been too hot here for the past week to get out and do any consistent work outside.  Add to this, we've had really good rain for the past few weeks, and we have a formula for explosive weed growth.

Here is one of my secret weapons:

Ornamec is a selective herbicide that only kills grassy weeds, and it doesn't harm broadleaf plants (like roses).  I can use it in my rose beds to kill Bermuda and Crab Grass, which are so incredibly hard to get rid of any other way.  (The same chemical is available ready to use as Ortho's Grass-B-Gone.) 

If you want to give Ornamec a try, be sure to read the label to make sure that it is safe around the plants near your grassy weeds.  Roses are one of the plants specifically mentioned in the instructions as safe. 

For broadleaf weeds in large areas (away from the roses!) I use glyphosate (expensive brand name:  Round-up). 

Glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide, which means that it kills any green plant it touches, so extreme caution must be used when applying it.  I never spray glyphosate if there is any breeze, because I won't risk having it drift onto my roses.  As you can see, I bought the super economy size bottle of concentrate this last time.  I have garden areas to clear, and Glyphosate is the best way for me to kill off vegetation in an area that I'm preparing for roses.  (My gardens are WAY too big to even consider digging the grass and weeds out by hand.)

Some of the newly planted roses are barely able to keep their little heads above the faster-growing weeds that are trying to suffocate them.  I have to carefully pull all of these weeds by hand.  Moist soil the day after it rains makes really nice conditions for pulling weeds.  Even the wild onions come out without a fight.

I have found that the areas with the worst weeds are the beds where the mulch has deteriorated almost to the point of having bare ground showing.  After I get rid of these current weeds, I MUST make it a priority to put down more mulch to try to keep this from happening again. 

A Visit to the Lavender Farm

I played hookey yesterday afternoon.  Work in the nursery this time of year is at a full-time level, but I set aside my to-do list and went on an adventure with my friend Gale.  (Her company works 4-day weeks, so she's almost always up for some sort of excursion on Fridays)  Yesterday, we went to Seven Oaks Lavender Farm in Catlett, Virginia.

Gale and I both adore the smell of lavender.  Not the cheap pseudo-lavender scent that's in many of the 'lavender' scented products, either ... the real thing.  I figured she would be the perfect companion for this trip. 

Our afternoon started with lunch at an Italian restaurant.  (girlfriend afternoon = lunch and girl talk, of course)  After lunch, we headed for the farm to see what it was all about.  It was easy to find from the directions on the Seven Oaks web site.  We parked on the lane and walked toward the lavender field, and the scent of lavender on the afternoon breeze was wonderful!

Each of those plants you see is at least three feet in diameter ... I had no idea lavender can get that big!

The lavender is planted through ground cloth to suppress weeds.

The whole field was buzzing (literally) with bumblebees, honeybees, and all sorts of butterflies.  I tried to get photos of them, but the little critters were too quick and the autofocus on my camera couldn't keep up.  There are four types of lavender at Seven Oaks, and each type seemed to attract different insects.  The bumblebees preferred one, while the honeybees were mostly on one of the others.  The butterflies were everywhere.

Seven Oaks has a lavender shop that carries anything lavender you can possibly imagine.  Many of the items are made from lavender grown right there on the farm.  I bought three different types of sachets, including a small embroidered one for my new car.  (no shop photos, sorry.  It was a bit too crowded for picture taking.)

This trip REALLY made me want to grow some lavender here at our place, but (alas) I have too many roses to plant to even consider adding anything else to the mix right now.  Maybe later ...

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog.)

Nursery Closed for the Next Two Saturdays

I have to cancel my Saturday nursery hours for this weekend (June 12) and next weekend (June 19).  Two of my garden club friends passed away recently, and I have out-of-town funerals to attend on these days.

It seems appropriate to have a photograph of fallen rose petals to accompany today's post.

The nursery will be open regular hours again (10am - 3pm) starting on June 26.  If you want to visit in the meantime, just send me an email and we'll set up a time for you to come.  The Internet store is always available to take your orders, and there is never a charge to pick up your roses here on site.

I look forward to seeing you on the 26th.  I'm sorry for any inconvenience ... thanks for understanding.

Sincerely,

Connie

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog.)

In the Pink

Last fall, we began the process of turning the area underneath our pecan tree into a large shade garden.  The first step, and the only one we've completed to date, was to put in a mixed beds of hydrangeas, helebores, hostas, and the like, around our Tiki Hut. 

I propagated most of the hydrangeas we planted from ones I came across in my travels through cemeteries in the last year or two.  They went into the ground last fall as leafless twigs, and they're developing nicely so far this year.  The way they are blooming now speaks volumes about our soil here on the 'farm'.

They're PINK!  The flowers on this type of hydrangea are blue in acid soil and pink in alkaline.  I have never seen a hydrangea bloom pink in the garden of any of our former houses, nor in the gardens of friends.  The flowers on the plants the cuttings came from were blue-blue-blue, and now they're pink because of the soil pH in this spot.

I tested my soil before we planted anything on this property, expecting to have to amend heavily and lime to counteract the acid soil I am accustomed to in this part of the country.  To my surprise, I haven't found a pH reading below 6.0 anywhere on this property.  The pH beside these hydrangeas is 6.2!  High enough to turn them from their usual Virginia blue to a lovely shade of pink.

There are three other types of hydrangeas planted in these beds ... they all have white flowers.

Annabelle.

'Tokyo Delight' Lace Cap.

and Tardiva, which isn't blooming right now.

Our goal with these beds is to create a lush, tropical atmosphere.  Within a couple of years, the hydrangeas will get tall, the hostas will spread out, and the helebores should multiply and form little colonies. 

It's hard to tell from these photos that the beds are 6-feet deep.  Looking at it now, I can see that I'm going to have to enlarge them.  That's okay, we have lots of space ... it's the time that's going to be hard to manage.

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog.)

Another One Bites the Dust

My Expedition died yesterday morning.  It was running fine this weekend, so we had no warning of its impending demise.  Now, it needs major engine work and a new transmission ... too much to consider doing to a 12-year-old vehicle with 170,000+ miles on it.

Picking up retired greyhounds in North Carolina.

We spent all day yesterday and today trying to decide what to replace her with.  That vehicle was my everything.  It hauled my kids, and their friends, and all their stuff wherever we needed to go.  It could carry more cargo and lumber-yard stuff than either of our two pick-up trucks.  Most importantly, I could easily put seven rescued greyhounds in there for their trip to new homes and forever families.  All of this is gone now.

I don't need a big SUV often enough to buy another one.  Our red Jeep Wrangler is my everyday transportation.  We have two pickup trucks for hauling 'stuff', so that's not really a regular requirement either.  We only run dog transports every couple of months now, so it doesn't seem wise to buy a vehicle mainly for this. 

What we NEED is something that can hold two big dogs and a car seat.  It isn't often that we have both the dogs and the grandson in the car at the same time, but we need to be able to do it when necessary.  To accomplish this, whatever we buy has to have a split back seat that folds flat and level ... very few vehicles do this (except for big SUVs). 

This is my Daniel, when I was bringing him up from NC.

We zeroed in on the Ford Flex yesterday afternoon.  The salesman at the Ford dealership was very helpful, showing us the features and functions of the vehicle ... but I just couldn't make myself like it.  "Let's see what they have at the Chrysler dealership." my husband said.

As we drove onto the lot, the first thing we saw was a row of 4-door Jeep Wranglers.  We found them to be surprisingly roomy inside ... equivalent to the space in my mom and dad's Explorer, I think.  (The Explorer's seats don't fold flat, so one of these was never an option for us.)  I was immediately comfortable driving this Jeep, it met all our needs and looked cool doing it, so we decided to buy one.

This is the one I built on the Jeep web site, and it's exactly like what we bought.

Some time tomorrow, as soon as it arrives from southwest Virginia (via an inter-dealer trade, because our local dealer didn't have exactly the one we wanted), we will be the proud owners of a brand new 2010 Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon, in Deep Sea Blue Pearl with every option known to mankind ... just the way I like it.

I have to thank the staff at Safford Chrysler Dodge Jeep in Fredericksburg for making the purchase of this car such a positive experience.  They don't pay me to say nice things ... I just want everyone to know that you CAN and SHOULD have pleasant experience in a car dealership.  Everyone at Safford treated us with respect, and I appreciate that.

I'm still pretty bummed about the sudden death of my Expedition.  I'll go to the mechanic's shop later this afternoon to clean all of my stuff out of it before the tow truck takes it away.  This new Jeep should help take some of the sting out of it, I hope.

I can't help myself ... in my head, I keep hearing, "One Jeep, two Jeep, red Jeep, blue Jeep".  ... sigh ...

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog.)