"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.

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

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