A 360-degree Trip Around the Rose Field.

Armed with my trusty Nikon D70, equipped with its new lens (dropped the old one while on vacation in Tennessee last month) and new memory card (still haven't found where the cats put the old one), I set out for the Rose Field to see what there was to photograph.  Instead of showing you pretty portrait-shots in macro, cropped to avoid the weeds and mayhem, I decided to try a 360 degree tour from one spot ... to give you a bit of an idea of what I have created in this garden.  (All of the photos in this post are saved a bit larger than usual, so you can pour over the details easier if you want.  Click on the image to enlarge it, if you want.)

I stood in one spot, turning counter-clockwise after each shot, to try to get a continuous panorama.  Instead of commentary and drivel, I am just going to give you a list of some of the roses in each photo.  Nice and simple this morning.

Enjoy!

1.  Charles de Mills, gallica

2.  "Connie's Favorite Gallica" (that's the study name)

3.  Cornelia (hybrid musk)

4.  Buff Beauty (hybrid musk)

5.  Renae (climbing floribunda)

6.  Blairii #1 (climber)

7.   The Bishop (hybrid china)

8.  "Ruth's Steeple Rose"  (hybrid china)

9.  "Old Homestead" (hybrid china)

1.  Vanity (hybrid musk)

2.  Marie Pavie (polyantha)

3.  Daybreak (hybrid musk)

4.  Cornelia (hybrid musk)

5.  Zephirine Drouhin (bourbon)

6.  Kathleen Harrop (bourbon)

7.  Puerto Rico (found rose)

8.  Daphne (hybrid musk)

9.  Verdi (hybrid musk)

1.  Geschwind's Schoenste (hybrid multiflora)

2.  Violet Hood (hybrid musk)

3.  Vanity (hybrid musk)

4.  I accidently skipped 4.  Oops.

5.  Verdi (hybrid musk)

6.  La Marne (polyantha)

1.  Russeliana (rambler)

2.  Walsh's America (hybrid multiflora)

3.  Geschwind's Nordlandrose (rambler)

4.  Geschwind's Schoenste (rambler)

5.  Violet Hood  (hybrid musk)

6.  Portland from Glendora (portland/damask perpetual)

1.  Arcata Pink Globe (hybrid setigera)

2.  De la Grifferie (rambler)

3.  Russelliana (rambler)

4.  Walsh's America (hybrid multiflora)

5.  Geschwind's Nordlandrose (rambler)

6.  Belle Isis (gallica)

1.  Arcata Pink Globe (hybrid setigera)

2.  De la Grifferie (rambler)

3.  Portland from Glendora (portland/damask perpetual)

4.  Rose du Roi (portland)

5. Belle Isis (gallica)

6.  "Ruth's German Rose" (hybrid china)

7.  Crepuscule (tea noisette)

The Rose Field contains about 300 roses, all of which were planted in the summer of 2008.  (I chronicled the creation of the garden in THIS blog post.)  Most of the roses have grown far larger than I thought they would, and they crowd each other, flop on one another, and block the carefully-designed paths.  During the Open House on Saturday, I told visitors that this garden reminds me of a children's activity book pencil maze ... you can get to every rose in the garden, you just can't necessarily take a direct route to get there.

The weeds have taken over, and the roses need some maintenance, but the Rose Field is my very favorite garden ... warts and all.  I can stand in the middle of it, surrounded by roses as tall as I am, lost in the color and fragrance.  This post is my attempt to share that sensation with those of you who are unable to visit in person. 

A Craig's List Treasure

Since the roses worked so hard on Saturday at the nursery opening and Open House, I decided to reward them on Sunday with a quick trip through the Antiques section of our local Craig's List.  Scattered in among the chairs and tables and trunks and other paraphernalia listed for sale, I found a true treasure.

You are looking at a dental cabinet manufactured by the American Cabinet Company in the 1920s.  The case is wood, and the drawer insides and slides are metal.  It originally had milk glass tray liners for most of the drawers, but these are long gone.  It does, however, still have the milk glass insides of the upper cabinets.

When it was new, it wore mahogany veneer and dark stain.  Sometime in its life, someone painted it white and used it as a tool cabinet. 

The woman I bought it from started to strip off the paint, but she didn't get very far into the job before she gave up.  It shouldn't be too hard to remove the rest of the paint on this beauty (being as I have stripped acres and acres of paint off the surfaces on the inside of this old house of ours, I have tons of experience).  It will, however, be a challenge to get rid of the sander burns and gouges in the lower left drawers.

Someone stripped the mahogany veneer off of the sides of this piece.  The secondary wood is chestnut ... a species that has been extinct for a LONG time ... but it's not NICE chestnut that I can sand and stain and leave exposed, darn it!  Part of me is saying that I should repair this piece as well as I can, and repaint it.

Notice the knobs?  They're faceted black glass!  I'm missing two of the small ones ... I wonder if I can find replacements?  The pressed 'mock leaded glass' in the upper doors is in really good condition.  The beveled mirror has just the right amount of staining and flaking to make it perfect! 

While I was searching, I found an eBay listing for a cabinet that is IDENTICAL to mine.  Trust me when I tell you that I paid a tiny fraction of the auction price for mine.

(eBay listing photo)

This thing is incredibly heavy, and the only way The Husband and I could get it out of the truck yesterday afternoon was to remove all of the drawers first.  As we did, we found little treasures that had fallen behind the drawers.  Who knows how long these pharmaceutical samples have been there?

A part of the packaging for some sort of stomach medicine.

This is an antiseptic apparently meant for stylish, well-dressed gentlemen.

This muscle relaxant is still prescribed today, without the Tylenol and Codeine in the current formulation.

With everything else going on around here, I do not know when I will find the time or energy to attack this project.  I also have no idea where it will go once it IS finished.  What I DO know is that I love this piece, and I would have kicked myself forever if I had passed it by. 

For now, this cabinet will stay in the garage with all of my other treasured diamonds-in-the-rough. 

Have you found any treasures recently?

Whew! What a Weekend.

Open House on Saturday was amazing!  The weather was threatening all day, with clouds and occasional drizzle, but true rose lovers are not defeated by a few raindrops.  We had fewer visitors than I expected because of the weather, but this meant that each person who came here could have more of my attention.  Garden tours were longer and more detailed than I thought I would have time to do.  I had adequate time to answer everyone's questions and make suggestions regarding rose varieties.  I was afraid things would be crowded and hectic ... and I was pleased that it wasn't like that.

New Dawn, wearing raindrops.

The roses for sale on the nursery benches were lined up alphabetically, to make it easy for us to find the individual varieties.  Quite a few of these little beauties went to new homes before the day was over.

The Open House wouldn't have been as successful or relaxed without the help of some very special people.  Two of our daughters took turns writing up sales ... one worked in the morning, and the other took the afternoon shift.  My friend Robert spent the day helping me answer questions about rose care and selection of varieties while I was in the garden leading tours. 

My biggest help, and my strongest supporter, is my husband.  He works so hard for days like these ...helping with all the preparations, playing parking attendant, directing visitors around the gardens, writing sales, making lunch, and countless other things.  There is no way I could do this without him.

I would love to show you some more photos of the garden, but there is a hitch.  I have some really nice photos that I took with my new lens, but I discovered on Sunday that I have misplaced my memory card.  Armed with a new memory card that I bought this afternoon, tomorrow's weather promises to be favorable and I have a LOT of roses to photograph. 

I wonder if one of the cats made off with the memory card?

Stopping to Appreciate the View

As I was finishing up my work outside yesterday evening, I turned toward the house and saw the most amazing view.  The sun was shining and making our pecan tree GLOW!  I pulled my trusty point-and-shoot camera from my pocket, to capture the scene so I could share it with all of you.

I love this view because it shows the enormous size and the MAJESTY of this tree.  The pavilion is cool and shaded, cradled beneath the huge branches.  It is a great spot to sit with friends ... and the perfect setting for our daughter's wedding. 

We are almost done with our modifications to the pavilion, and I will share the befores and afters with you soon.  For now, I have to switch gears to finish the last few things to prepare for my Open House on Saturday.  Are you coming?

A Beautiful Beacon in the Back Garden

In the middle of the Rose Field, on an arch near the middle of the center aisle, is a beacon of a red rose that cannot be ignored. 

This rose was sold to me as 'Noella Nabonnand', a climbing Tea rose that was introduced in 1901.  Keeping with the theme that I started yesterday (roses I grow that turned out to be something other than what they're labeled), it appears that this rose is really a climbing Hybrid Tea rose from 1938 named 'Marie Nabonnand'.  I read that these two roses are often confused in commerce.  The description of 'Marie Nabonnand' seems to most accurately describe my rose.

No matter what the correct identification is, I love this rose!  It is big and bright and vigorous, and it holds the record among my reblooming roses for being the first rose to reach the top of its arch.

Like the roses I featured yesterday, this rose has WAY more flowers per square foot than average ... and it is such a stunning, cherry red color!

I tried to propagate this rose last year, but all my cuttings of it died.  I plan to try again, because this rose is too good to keep to myself.

If you are planning to visit during my Spring Open House on Saturday, you can see for yourself how beautiful this rose is  ... and plenty of others that are blooming right now. 

Most of the roses aren't even in full bloom yet.  There are still TONS more yet to come.

Two Superstar Roses in the Front Garden

There are two roses in front of the house that are putting on a spectacular show right now. 

Schoener's Nutkana is a little-known rose that is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous every spring.  These beautiful magenta flowers are 3 inches across, and the bush is covered with them!

 I got this rose as a lucky accident.  When I placed my final order with Sequoia Nursery before they closed in 2008, I was supposed to receive a hybrid tea rose called 'Schultheis American Beauty'.  Whoever gathered the roses in my order must have made an alphabetical mistake, and accidently grabbed the rose right next to the one I ordered. I didn't realize the mistake until the following year when my rose flowered ... by that time the nursery was closed and everything there was gone.  I'm thrilled beyond words with the bold statement that Schoener's Nutkana makes in the garden.  After it's finished flowering, I MUST move it to a better spot so it can grow and arch without flopping all over its neighboring roses ... remember, it was supposed to have been a mannerly hybrid tea.

The real star of the front yard right now is a rose that was given to me as Applejack, but I am having doubts about this ID.

Applejack is a rose that was introduced by Dr. Griffith Buck, and the photos of it online show flowers that have a different form than my rose.  Is anyone here familiar enough with Buck roses to know whether this is Applejack?  Perhaps it's another Buck rose?

Whatever it is, every square inch of this rose bush is covered with flowers right now.

There are lots of other roses throughout the property that are in full bloom, with many others just beginning their show.  There is a lot for garden visitors to see during my Open House on Saturday.

If you are available on Saturday and want to visit, the details are:

Hartwood Roses' Spring Open House

Saturday, May 14

10:00am to 3:00pm

335 Hartwood Road

Fredericksburg, Virginia

The Fruits of This Weekend's Labor

The weather this weekend was perfect for working outside.  The Husband's goal was to get all of our shade beds looking good ... removing the weeds (mostly violets and chickweed) and installing garden edging around the pavilion (the edging was FREE on Craig's List a few weeks ago).  He worked incredibly hard, and the results are wonderful. 

This will be the site of our daughter's wedding ceremony next month, so it has to look really, REALLY good.  Frequent rain showers have made the ground perfectly damp to make weed pulling easier, without being too wet to plant.  I have a few hostas in pots left to plant in the bare spots near the fence.  We'll lay mulch as soon as we get more, and the area will be finished!  This is one more thing that we can check off the wedding To Do list.

(This photo was taken yesterday evening with my new lens ... it arrived in the mail on Friday! It's great to have my trusty Nikon DSLR back in business again.  Depending on today's light conditions, expect to be totally bombarded with rose photos in the very near future.)