For now, as I wait for garden roses, I can enjoy a few flowers on some of the roses in the greenhouse. These pink roses are a very welcome sight ... soothing my restlessness and bringing a huge smile to my face. I took my camera to the greenhouse this evening ... to share the flowers with you, hoping to make you smile, too.
This one is "Portland from Glendora", one of the few roses I love enough to have a duplicate in the garden. The color is a perfect medium pink, and the fragrance is over-powering.
A small Carefree Beauty in a 3 1/2" pot produced this FOUR-INCH flower! Amazing!!
It's a little past peak, and not exactly perfect for such a tight close up, but I had to share it.
Most people who know me know that Ralph Moore is one of my very favorite rose hybridizers. He produced an incredibly imaginative assortment of roses in his long career. This one, Little Buckaroo, is a beautiful miniature rose from 1956.
Hybrid China roses were first introduced in the late 18th Century, when European rose breeders crossed Gallica and Centifolia roses with the 'new' ever-blooming roses that had recently been introduced from China. There are two Hybrid Chinas blooming in the greenhouse right now ... this one is "The Bishop" ...
... and the other one is Shailer's Provence ... another rose that I love enough to have two of them in the garden. Shailer's Provence is among the first roses to bloom in my garden, and one of the last spring-blooming OGRs to finish. It also hold the distinction of being the first rose I ever rustled from an endangered site.
The tag on this next rose says "Unknown". The original tag from last year is lost, and I retagged it to remind me that I have to try to figure out its true identity when it bloomed. It's blooming ... and I still don't know. Whatever it is, it's something that I have left over from last year's stock. This should help narrow it down a bit.
This last rose is one that I am growing for myself, from cuttings sent to me by a friend in California. It's called 'Puanani', and it's a lilac pink sport of 'Playgirl' a hot pink floribunda introduced by Ralph Moore. I love the simplicity of single roses ... five perfect petals and beautiful yellow stamens.
Here's what the whole little plant looks like. The flowers are about 3 inches across, and the plant is only about a foot high right now.
As I finished up and turned to leave the greenhouse to go inside to cook dinner, I saw a lovely little vignette to use to finish this post. What a perfect way to end the day ... fragrant roses, and a tall, cold one.
I'm sharing this post on the following sites:
Fertilizer Friday at Tootsie Time
Garden Blogger's Bloom Day at May Dreams Gardens
Photo Feature Friday at A Rosy Note
(Share the love, and go visit some more blooming gardens.)