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December 5, 2015

Celebrating 4 Years

Today is the fourth anniversary of this blog -- my first post was on December 5, 2011.  This calls for a celebration, and what better way to celebrate than to add a bit of animation to a couple of wintery scenes.  We'll start with two photos retrieved from my post of February 8, 2014 that I titled "Cold Comfort", and then we'll add some "cool" animation to them.  I'm again indebted to the team at  LunaPic and their website lunapic.com for providing the falling snow effect and converting my photos to "GIF"s.  So here's a special treat for all of the readers of this blog, one that will soothe you the longer that you gaze.

A wintery scene from my back yard --



Snowbirds along the fence --

November 15, 2015

Extreme photo editing

Once again, I am indebted to the fine folks at befunky.com for use of their online website.  In a previous episode (see next post -- "A rose collage"), I developed a great looking BeFunky photo collage.  In today's episode, I am using the BeFunky Photo Editor.  As you can see below, we are talking "extreme" editing -- the photo to left is the original, and to the right is the edited version.   The blooms are courtesy of one of my 'Queen Elizabeth' seedling roses.


Update of November 20, 2015:    As per the above, I've been doing more extreme photo editing, again using photos of blooms from some of my 'Queen Elizabeth' seedlings.   Shown below are several of the best photo pairs that I've had the pleasure of constructing (click on the photos to enlarge them).






                                                                                                                                                    Update of November 26,  2015:    Extreme experimentation continues, but this time I have switched over to a different website photo editor.  The good people at LunaPic  (see lunapic.com) have some interesting tools for editing photos, and I chose their "neon filter" to convert still another 'Queen Elizabeth' seedling photo to something even more colorful, as shown below:

October 30, 2015

A rose collage

The weather is starting to turn, and it will be in a sporadic "funk" until next Spring.  Forced indoors today, I began looking for something constructive to do, preferably rose related.  I found just the ticket in an online photo collage maker, whose website is very appropriately named befunky.com .  Kudos and thanks to the team at "BeFunky" !  With a little experimentation, I came up with the following collage of blooms from some of my seedling rose plants --



Update of December 4, 2015:   Maybe another collage will help us all get through the winter.  We'll use a different format provided by "BeFunky" to show more beautiful blooms that just a few months ago were lighting up the back yard --



Update of December 22, 2015:    It's getting close to Christmas, so here's a special holiday treat for you.  My 'Red Galaxy' rose has Christmas-like bright red blooms, and the starry spots transform a dark December night sky --


September 16, 2015

An "old fashioned" rose

One of my unnamed seedlings from the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose has blooms that look rather old fashioned.  The blooms have the most petals of any of my seedlings, and in rose terminology are considered to be "very full".  It's interesting that even at an early age, when the seedling opened its very first bloom, this modern rose looked old fashioned.  That's its first bloom shown below in the photo on the left, and to its right is a photo of one of today's blooms.  I used the bloom on the right to make an official count of the number of petals, and there's all 119 of them displayed on the table in the third photo.

Photo taken:  August 11, 2009
Rose plant was just 3 months old
Photo taken:  September 16, 2015
 
Photo taken:  September 16, 2015
  
Photo taken:  August 5, 2016



Update of August 5, 2016:  I added a new photo today (the fourth photo above), seeing that the rose bush was displaying a beautiful cluster of blooms this morning.  The summer heat is making it easier for the "very full" blooms to open properly.

September 9, 2015

"Queen bees"

These warm days of September are attracting quite a few bees to my back yard roses, and I had the rare privilege of photographing two "queen bees" on a single rose bloom.  Now, an apiarist would argue that these aren't queen bees, because queen bees are the ones that remain in their hives tending to reproductive duties.  Ah, but you must consider that the pair of brotherly bees in the photo below are gathering their pollen from one of my 'Queen Elizabeth' rose blooms.  So why not call them "queen bees".

Photo taken:  September 9,  2015

September 5, 2015

The look-alikes

Among the various rose seedlings, roses from cuttings, and named commercial roses in my yard, I have 39 'Queen Elizabeth' seedlings that I "passively" bred by just letting my 'Queen Elizabeth' parent rose bush be open pollinated (most likely, SELF pollinated).  I knew that the parents and grand-parents of the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose were a diverse group, and I truly expected the seedlings to be very diverse themselves.  I didn't quite expect that out of the 39, only ONE seedling would grow up to actually look like its mother.  As an exercise, see if you can tell which bloom below is from one of my 'Queen Elizabeth' roses and which one is from the seedling in question.


Photo taken:  September 5,  2015
Photo taken:  September 5,  2015

If you identified the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose to be the one on the left, congratulations.  And, if you want to see many of the different-looking siblings of the unnamed seedling on the right, just keep reading this blog.  You will be surprised.

But first, a little bit of history.  The 'Queen Elizabeth' rose was introduced into commerce in 1954, but only after it took several years to build up enough stock for sales.  Its hybridizer, Walter Lammerts, actually made his cross of 'Charlotte Armstrong' x 'Floridora' in 1946, and one of his seedlings from that cross happily resulted in the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose.  I'm guessing that he saw the very first bloom of 'QE' sometime in late 1946 or early 1947.  Sadly, I doubt that anybody took a photo of that first bloom.

But maybe, just maybe, we can get a glimpse of what that bloom might have looked like if we look at the first bloom of my seedling (the rose on the right, as seen above) in a photo that I took in July of 2010 when the seedling was just 4 months old.  There it is below on the left.  And to its right is the same seedling as it stands 6 feet tall today, a rose bush that could easily be mistaken for 'Queen Elizabeth'.

Photo taken:  July 16,  2010
Photo taken:  September 5,  2015

August 21, 2015

"Slime mold" is for real

If you have never heard of slime mold, or don't believe that it exists, then I have news for you.  I've seen it with my own eyes, and it's in my backyard rose bed right now.  The combination of moss and liverworts covering the rose bed is gradually maturing and slowly producing decayed material that is proving to be a good host for the mold.  According to Wikipedia, there are more than 900 species of slime mold, and a search through Google Images shows that it comes in several different colors.  Mine happens to be bright white, and the larger of the two lumps shown in the photos below measures around 1" by ¾".  As you can see, it's just a few inches away from one of my roses, so I'll have to keep an eye on it.


August 19, 2015

The TIME MACHINE

As I was watering the roses this morning, one particular bloom really caught my eye.  It was a white bloom on one of my 'Queen Elizabeth' seedlings, and it got me thinking about firing up my virtual time machine consisting of two pieces:  home computer and digital camera.  We can look back to June 14th of 2009 when I took a photo of this rose's first bloom, when the plant was just 2½ months old.  Then we'll zoom forward 6+ years to today to see what it was that caught my eye --

Photo taken:  June 14, 2009
Photo taken:  August 19, 2015

August 16, 2015

They have it MADE IN THE SHADE

Sometimes an experiment can be successful, so it pays to be adventurous out in the rose garden.  I knew that the small empty patch of ground that faces north in my backyard would provide good shade for starting several cuttings from my 'Red Galaxy' rose.  The cuttings were taken in the first half of June (2014), individually potted, and then placed atop the aforementioned patch where they received at most 2 hours of direct sun each day.  To seal the deal, they all were misted several times a day  -- you do what  you have to do when you don't have a greenhouse.  The photo below to the left shows the cuttings after about 1 month.  They were doing so well that I decided to let them permanently reside in the shady patch.  I'll refer you to my post of September 22, 2014 titled "The chicken inspector" to see how they looked after being planted out.  The photo below to the right shows them today, healthy plants with bright blooms in an otherwise shady spot.

For this experiment, two factors were in my favor.  First, the shade is house shade, not tree shade, so bothersome tree roots won't be spoilers.  Second, the chosen rose variety mostly has blooms of 5 petals, so the blooms open a lot easier than a heavier petalled rose.

Photo taken:  July 17,  2014
Photo taken:  August 16,  2015

July 10, 2015

High noon in the back yard

The back yard constantly beckons to have photos taken, even at high noon.  Whether in full sun, or with overcast, the two photos below were taken around noon time.  But to tell the truth, the photos are both actually composites created using photo stitching software on my computer.  They are best viewed if you click on them for enlargement.  The photo to the left is from my favorite viewing spot, close to the rose bed, and getting the full effect of the giant rose bushes in the background.  Two of the bushes, grown from seed, are now 8 feet tall, and a few more seedling roses rise to 7 feet.  The "photo" is really a composite of 4 photos, and is set up using the "matrix" feature of the software.  The result gives a pretty fair representation of what I actually see in person.  The stitched photo to the right speaks for itself, but in a language understood only by my avian friends.

The MATRIX
Photo taken:  July 10, 2015
The FLOCK
Photo taken:  June 24, 2015


June 27, 2015

Roses in the morning

My best rose photos, especially during the hot Summer months, are taken in the morning.  Blooms are beginning to open, but the day's heat hasn't sapped them of their youth.  Below are some striking examples of bloom clusters from four of my rose seedlings, obtained from open pollination of their parent rose: 'Queen Elizabeth'.  The progeny of this parent rose are likely to bear roses in clusters, as 'Queen Elizabeth', the first of the Grandiflora class, is heavily indebted to the Floribunda roses.  For additional photos of select bloom clusters, see my post of July 5, 2014 titled "Royal roses".

Photo taken:  June 27,  2015
Photo taken:  June 26,  2015

Photo taken:  June 9,  2015
Photo taken:  June 12,  2015

Update of September 4,  2015:   The pretty roses just keep coming.  Below are blooms from four more of my unnamed seedlings from the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose.  Considering that their open pollination beginnings were very likely the result of SELF pollination, the implication is that there must be much diversity in the gene pool of the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose, which is quite true (and you don't have to go very far back in its ancestry).  These eight rose photos (4 above + 4 below) are testimony to that diversity.

Photo taken:  June 28,  2015
Photo taken:  July 3,  2015

Photo taken:  July 5,  2015
Photo taken:  September 3,  2015

June 16, 2015

Visitors !

The garden is in mid-season form now, and some guests from the Salem Rose Society paid a visit yesterday evening.  Through the magic of digital photography and the Internet, you can share their experience via the following photos.  The first photo shows the welcoming display of rose blooms along the driveway, and the second photo shows the back yard and the esteemed visitors.  If you feel like "surfing the web", here is a link to the web site (blog) of the Salem Rose Society:  Click here to transfer to the SRS blog    (But don't forget to come back here !)

Photo taken:  June 15, 2015

Photo taken:  June 15, 2015

Update of August 31, 2015:    Please allow me to introduce you to the "ground cover" that you see amongst the driveway roses in the upper photo.  It's not as exotic as the liverworts and mosses in the back yard rose bed, but I like it just the same.  The name of the humble yet indomitable cover is Sagina procumbens.  In the driveway bed I treat it with respect, and it gives a bit of a wild aura to the rose display.  Examining the lower photo, there's some Sagina in the back yard also.  There it is in the circular wells surrounding the 'Queen Elizabeth' roses interspersed in the lawn.

May 14, 2015

Another sign of global warming ?

Back in 2012, I documented some benchmark events, such as when the first rose bloom opened; I refer you to my post of May 14, 2012 ("First open bloom of the year !").  Well, here we are exactly three years later and there is quite a difference in the timing of bloom production.  We've had some spells of warmer than normal weather from January through May, and I can't help but think that global warming may be playing a big role.  Dozens of my rose bushes have already opened their first blooms, and the rose garden is full of color today, May 14th.

Photo taken:  May14,  2015
Photo taken:  May 14,  2015

April 30, 2015

Ushering in the new rose year

It's been almost 5 months since my last posting, and I can hardly contain my excitement that the new ROSE YEAR has begun.  The first open bloom this year (and the earliest in my 8 years in Salem) was on April 21, and you'll see it in the 3rd photo below.  But first let me show you one of my 'Queen Elizabeth' seedlings; the photos are of the same rose bloom taken 2 days apart.  With just 20 petals, this rose will always find it easier to open, so in a way it is suited to the cooler climate here in Oregon.  The bloom in the photo on the left is a generous 5 inches across.  By the way, a 4 bloom cluster of this rose can be seen in my posting of July 5th, 2014 ("Royal roses").

Photo taken:  April 30,  2015
Photo taken:  April 28,  2015
The photo below on the left is another of my 'Queen Elizabeth' seedlings, and it bears the distinction of being the earliest bloom this year.  As expected, the petal count is low, but the bloom is really colorful.  The rose to the right is one of my 'Red Galaxy' clones that I grew from a cutting last year.  The bloom fully opened today and the plant is the 2nd rose from the "chicken" that can be seen in my posting of September 22nd, 2014 ("The chicken inspector").  My experiment of growing nine 'Red Galaxy' clones along the north side of the house appears to be successful, as all nine plants are already showing multiple flower buds.

Photo taken:  April 21,  2015
Photo taken:   April 30,  2015