Life imitates Art

It's getting late in the year, and the roses have been gradually going dormant.  You probably won't be hearing from me again until next Spring, but you can always go back and rummage through the previous 84 posts and their 300+ rose and garden photos.  Remember that there are additional "pages" in this blog; they are accessed via the tabs at the top of the blog, which are labelled: Queen Elizabeth seedlings, Voodoo seedlings, German seedlings, and A rose seedling grows up. 

This, by the way, is the sixth anniversary of this blog;  the first post was on December 5, 2011.  Herein, nature and digital photography have merged into an art form.  My garden guardian The Chicken, shown below on the left, has been with me for 20 years, and is itself a work of art.  The wild turkeys that have been roaming the neighborhood are life imitating art; I took their photo in October.

The Chicken
 (photo taken:  December 5, 2017)

Wild Turkeys
(photo taken:  October 22, 2017)

Update of December 27, 2017:    Let's flip sides and say that "Art imitates life".  Such is the case in the following 2 photos, where I first selected one of my better photos (from way back in 2015) and then processed the photo through a great photo editor & art facilitator.  Many thanks to photofuneditor.com for providing the software -- the result below is rather striking -- 

A pretty rose cluster
(photo taken:  June 28, 2015)

Art  imitating life
(created:  December 26, 2017)  

2nd annual "underdog" award

There are Oscars, and there are comeback player of the year awards, but there's nothing quite like the "underdog" rose bush of the year award.  It was exactly one year ago, September 10, 2016, that I  featured the first honoree in a post of that date titled:  The "underdog" rose bush.   You can see today's winner below -- an unnamed seedling of the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose.  This seedling stands just 1 foot tall, but it is displaying some very pretty blooms (photo on the right), just like it did when it displayed its very first bloom (photo on the left).   The "birthday" of this rose plant was March 16, 2010.  Doing some quick math, we see that the plant is a little less than 7½ years old.

First bloom:  June 17, 2010

Today:  September 10, 2017

Note:  there may or may not be an award next year.  Most of my seedlings are fairly vigorous, just like the two rose bushes (both over 5 feet tall) seen behind today's winner.

Eclipse Day

Well, August 21 is Eclipse Day in North America, so I had to add a couple of photos to the mix.  I didn't purchase a solar filter for my camera, because I wanted to include roses, as well as the Sun, in my photos.  The first photo was taken about 20 minutes into the eclipse, when the Sun was about 20% covered by the Moon.  The combination of bright Sun and no filter makes it look like no eclipse is in progress.  The rose on the right is 'Queen Elizabeth', while the white rose to its left is one of the "Queens" unnamed seedlings.   The second photo shows an interesting phenomenon.  It was taken just 8 minutes before "totality", and it shows the shadow cast by the giant Cedar tree seen in the first photo.  Notice the many "mini eclipses" in the shadow, each depicting the Sun which was at least 90% covered at the time -- photo: 10:09 am,  totality: 10:18 am.

Photo taken:  August 21,  2017

Photo taken:  August 21,  2017

Grandifloras

Grandiflora rose bushes (originally a cross between the hybrid tea and floribunda rose types) are tall plants that readily produce clusters of blooms.  The 'Queen Elizabeth' rose was the first to merit the designation of "grandiflora", and I have quite a few unnamed seedlings that I have grown from one of my open-pollinated (very likely "self" pollinated) 'Queen Elizabeth' roses.  As you can see in the photos below, the clustering habit is very evident in two of the seedlings.

Photo taken:  July 22, 2017

Photo taken:  July 29, 2017

Update of September 16, 2017:    The rose bush that produced the bloom cluster shown in the photo on the right (above) was looking really nice today.  The growing season is tapering off, and fewer clusters are forming, and more slowly at that.  With a rainy week ahead, I thought it would be wise to  take a photo of the rose today, while it still looked good.  This grandiflora-like seedling, now 5 feet tall, will be 8½ years old next month --

Photo taken:  September 16, 2017

Pretty sights in the rose garden

Once again a very pretty dragonfly lingered long enough in the garden to have its photo taken.  This one had a blue body and two-tone wings of pastel blue with streaks of black.  Through the transparent part of the wings, you can see the mossy ground cover that's now brown for the Summer.  You will find additional photos of other dragonfly visitors to the garden in earlier posts in this blog.  Here is today's visitor --

A pretty dragonfly
Photo taken:  July 14,  2017

The roses continue their amazing show of beauty.  Here are a couple of recent photos of blooms from two of my seedling rose bushes.  Both roses have the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose as their parent.

Photo taken:  July 5,  2017

Photo taken:  July 6,  2017

How things look today

Every once in a while I like to take some "panorama" (i.e. stitched) photos of the major rose growing areas around the house.  You will definitely want to click on these photos to enlarge them.  The first photo shows the big rose bed in the back yard.  Toward the left in this photo is a 7 foot tall 'Queen Elizabeth' rose, easy to recognize because today it is displaying many pretty pink blooms.  This particular rose bush is a parent of many seedlings in this same bed, many of which now stand between 6 and 8 feet tall.  The second photo shows the roses growing along the driveway in the front yard, a real challenging spot because of the sloping terrain -- a steep north-south slope (top to bottom in the photo) and a less steep west-east slope (left to right in the photo).  Well placed circular edging around each bush allows water to remain in place.

Photos stitched on July 2, 2017

Photos stitched on July 2,  2017

Update of July 12, 2017:     Not to be neglected is the rest of the back yard (photo below on the left), which features 5 store-bought 'Queen Elizabeth' roses that are now a little over 10 years old.  In the stitched photo below, they are the ones with the pink blooms.   The rose bush with 3 orange blooms is the hybrid tea  rose 'Voodoo', which was the only rose on the property when I moved here 10 years ago; I transplanted it to the back yard so that it would have some company.  In the two corners in back by the fence are a couple of Rosa glauca species roses which are also over 10 years old.

The photo to the right gives another perspective of the back yard, as seen when exiting the back door and approaching the rose garden.

Photos stitched on July 8,  2017

Photos stitched on July 12,  2017

Some early Summer blooms

It's been a while since my last post, but I haven't forgotten you.  I have some more pretty rose bloom photos to share, and once again they show the variety of flowers produced by the seedlings that I've grown from an open-pollinated 'Queen Elizabeth' parent.  Another point of interest:  look below the foliage in these photos to see the low-growing ground cover that's beginning to turn brown.  Quite a bit of Sagina procumbens has invaded the back yard rose bed, adding to the already present moss and liverwort patches.  Which will become dominant is anybody's guess.

Photo taken:  June 29,  2017

Photo taken:  June 20,  2017

Photo taken:  June 29,  2017

Photo taken:  June 21,  2017

Update of July 2, 2017:     To aid you in remembering what a 'Queen Elizabeth' bloom looks like, I took a photo earlier today of a cluster of seven blooms on one of my 'QE' rose bushes (I guess "seven" is reflective of the fact that I also have seven 'QE' rose bushes) --

Blooms on a 'Queen Elizabeth' rose bush
Photo taken:  July 2,  2017

A hint of pink

I was able to get out among the roses this evening after some "down time", and I noticed a trio of similar blooms even though they were on different rose bushes.  The thing that they had in common, however, was their parent plant, namely the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose.  The three roses were grown from seed from an open-pollinated (very likely self-pollinated) 'QE' mother plant.  The white blooms with a hint of pink are very pretty indeed.

Unnamed 'QE' seedling #1
Photo taken:  May 28, 2017

Unnamed 'QE' seedling #2
Photo taken:  May 28, 2017

Unnamed 'QE' seedling #3
Photo taken:  May 28, 2017

Update of June 4, 2017:     Below are two more different 'QE' seedlings that have the same color traits as the seedlings above.  You might detect a pattern here.  If you read my post of May 31, 2012 which I titled "Singles are nice, too",  you will see another strong trait among my seedlings.  Is there enough evidence there (and here) to determine who the "paternal grandfather" of the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose might be (which is to say, the "pollen parent" of the "pollen parent" of 'QE').  It still remains a mystery to me.

Unnamed 'QE' seedling #4
Photo taken:  June 4, 2017

Unnamed 'QE' seedling #5
Photo taken:  June 4, 2017

Patience pays off (finally)

It's hard to establish what is "normal" around here.  For the last 2 years, the first rose blooms in my garden opened on April 21st, but this year was quite different.  Today (May 10th), one of my 'Queen Elizabeth' seedlings was the first to open, and it was a welcome sight.  It helps that it is a 10 petal bloom (easier to open), but its size is an impressive 4 inches.  Below is a photo of today's bloom as well as a photo of the seedling way back in the year 2010 when the plant produced its very first bloom.  Check out the dates -- sometimes it doesn't take very long for a seedling to produce its first bloom.

Photo taken:  May 10,  2017

Birth date of rose:  March 15,  2010
First bloom:  July 24,  2010

Waiting patiently

The first open blooms in my backyard rose bed have generally appeared between the 20th of April and the 15th of May.  This having been the coldest and wettest Winter in the 10 years that I've been here, it looks like it's going to be middle of May this year.  In the meantime, I do routine inspections of the rose bushes, at least on those days when it's not "raining cats and dogs" (find the origin of this expression by doing a Google search).  During today's inspection tour, I spotted a well camouflaged visitor to the garden.  Fortunately, it stayed put until I was able to get my camera, and also do a quick recharge of the camera's batteries after a long Winter.  See if you can spot the visitor in the photo below --

The camouflaged dragonfly
April 30,  2017