Garden Pics: Late Summer Beauties!

I had it Pony. Beautiful - but very susceptible to blackspot.

I'd be willing to work for a fussy rose in this case. I just can't find one locally. Guess maybe I'll have to order one via the intarwebs eventually. It's the one thing missing from my collection of Mom's favorites.

Hmmmmmmmm. I'll take a look. Thanks, Kate!

But wait! - There's more!

VooDoo - tall, upright, narrow. It's the one on my driveway, Kathy.
Very blackspot resistant & really puts out the flowers.

Right on top is "Big Purple" Outstanding and smells wonderful. Needs to be sprayed, however, but not terribly disease prone. Another for fragrance is Double Delight, but it won't go in the color scheme.
One of my very favorites is Alexander, a bright orange, and definitely an older variety. It is thorny as all getout but an outstanding performer. Another along that same color scheme is Twice Spice or Spice Twice. Also a good performer in orange.
One of my very favorites is Playboy, but not a HT.
If you care to venture into the pinks, Savoy Hotel is a great performer, light pink, and Bewitched is huge and wonderful, a little bit brighter pink. Marijke Koopman is a hot pink I wouldn't be without.
You can probably tell, I am not into the very new stuff. I find that some of the "rose of the year" winners have a very limited popularity once they have been grown for a year or two and their faults are discovered.

My dream rose is still "Chrysler Imperial." Yes, I should be wearing White Shoulders perfume & have a green & orange living room, what can I say.

'What a Peach' - small flowered peach.

Wait a minute! I like White Shoulders, though I like Jessica McClintock (sp?) a lot better.
Chrysler Imperial needs more heat than we have in the PNW. Sorry! Olympiad is a good alternative.

This message was edited Sep 13, 2009 9:33 PM

My mom always wore White Shoulders and I used to, as well. It's hard to find, these days. There are few smells as comforting to me as that.

Thanks for the rose recommendations. I prefer finding something tried and true as I don't want to spend the summer fighting blackspot, powdery mildew, etc. I like peach, pink, yellow, orange rose combinations. Though if I had more beds, I'm sure I'd try a dark combo, too.

So Sutter's Gold, Voodoo, Alexander, Twice Spice, Savoy Hotel, Bewitched, Marijke Koopman, Chrysler Imperial, What a Peach. How to decide? Geeze, I wish I had Sharon's magic wand and could put a couple out in front. But my deer would devour them.

Don't get me wrong -- White Shoulders was my signature fragrance for many, many years. Nobody else my age used it, probably because nobody else chose a perfume because their grandma wore it. I just threw out my last bottle -- so many things make me sneeze anymore.

Forgot to mention one of the best "old standbys". Queen Elizabeth. It is in the first picture on my Member Page, with the mountian in the background. Be aware that it is about 10 or 12 feet tall there. That is, of course, a result of the way I prune my roses.
It is very disease resistant too and blooms nearly constantly. (Pink.)

Kathy, With the colors you are working with, I would add my vote to incorporate Playboy, even though it is not a HT. It is so disease resistant, and just blooms blooms blooms. The form is lovely as well.

I will also throw in a suggestion of Chicago Peace. I just love both the color and the monsterous size of the blooms. It merges orange and pink well.

Allright, Playboy IS pretty nice. :-D And how could I have skipped Chicago Peace?

Playboy is one that changes colour as it ages - pretty cool, and the buds always open completely due to low petal count.
Mine ate it winter 2008 along with a few others.

Katye, Can't believe that your Playboy gave in to the winter this year. It has been one of the hardiest/least affected by adverse weather roses in my garden. I did lose quite a few last winter too, but both my Playboy's came through without a problem. Then again, I lost all of my Cistus, but still have a monsterous hebe in the same bed that wasn't even phased. Weird.

It was planted in an area I could lovingly refer to as Mole Central - where all their tunnels come together.
Many things planted there have met their demise. The tunnels create an area of airspace which is what i think contributed to the plants' loss of nutrients/water. When I dug things up the roots along the tunnel-side were dead on the plants that didn't make it.
Oh my! That means I'll need to build another rose bed.

I hate it when that happens! (The need to build another bed that is!)

Here are the dwarf asters some of you got cuttings from- but they forgot to be dwarf. They've completely overrun my poor salvia. I've had these asters for about 6 years, always had them in containers. They stayed compact and polite, and bloomed every year, so I decided they deserved to go in a bed when we moved here. Then they exploded. LOL I cut these things back three times over the summer, and they still took over.

But it is oh so pretty.

Here you can see both aster plants and the havoc they're wreaking. hehe. I'll be sure and give them plenty of room next year. ;)

Oh, I love them, Willow. I just wasn't prepared for their behavior. hehe. When I do my re-org of that bed, they'll be staying right where they are, with plenty of space around them. :)

I love this delph- it's still going strong.

Here's a late summer beauty I found by the large pond yesterday. He was about 3" long without his legs. Too bad they don't eat dandelions.

This message was edited Sep 14, 2009 5:35 PM

Nice camouflage on that frog!

Ooh what a handsome frog! :D

I haven't found any frogs yet, but a few geckos (is that just a fancy-pants name for lizard)? And I love the dandelons here! They're kind of elegant, more like buttercups. I believe that littlejackwinter has discovered what voles (moles? honestly, all this new stuff) are because I'm finding tiny entrails just inside my studio door every morning. RIGHT where I would step on them in my bare feet. But not if I chose to lunge wildly to one side & break my neck instead.

Hmmm, decisions, decisions: potential for a broken neck vs. fresh entrails squished between the toes...
I guess if they're still warm, it would be less of a hit.

Hmmmmm - I did that with a slug the other night. I got out of bed and was just going to quickly run out into the back yard to check on something, so I didn't bother to put on my shoes. Shocking (for both me and the slug)!

Those are nice asters-still nice and moundy, not tall and vertical. I like it! :) I planted a lil' cutie from last season and it's 3.5 tall and very vertical this year-and not blooming yet..

Cute frogs and geckos. SK, watch for salamanders, too-you should have some because of your creek. They're native and quite cute. Some are also endangered.



I had to share this photo. I took Sophie to the vet yesterday, and here's a picture of her in the exam room waiting to see the vet.

Love the Pic of Sophie. I take it that she does not like going to the vet. LOL!

George Burns is putting on another show of blooms. This is a great rose.

The bloom on this Peace rose is huge, the size of a large grapefruit and it smells great.

I can't believe how fast this Clematis Tangutica grew. It has grown about 6-7 ft from a two inch pot this spring and has late blooms. It's a keeper!

What the heck is Sophie? A chipmunk?

Cute purse with the fur lining LOL

You take your bags to the vet? Is that for cleaning?

That's cute. When I take Shadow to the vet she is always under the rug in the carrier and totally catatonic when pulled out. Doesn't move a muscle until she can go back in and under the rug again.

Nice clematis, Bea. They do well up here, but it's so much hotter down there . . .

Lol, here's a normal picture of Sophie. That bag is monstrous-way bigger than I thought it was going to be. I bought it online on clearance-looked a lot smaller in the pix. It is almost large enough to require its own vet visits. ;)

Willow, yes, if I let Sophie get back in her carrier after the tech's poked and prodded I'd never get her back out, so she desperately searches for whatever hiding spot she can find. Last time she hid behind us on the bench, but she was still visible-she liked this much better. :)


Mmm....Peace rose...beautiful. I don't think I'm familiar with that kind of Clematis-it's nice!

Oh, too funny. So you didn't take her into the vet in the bag, but that's where she hid when she got out of the carrier?