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