High Summer

      It's rose season, and lots of the inmates are doing their best to cheer up the view. This is one of my climbers which hasn't bloomed for the last three years, but it is covered this year. The blooms are a simply glorious, deep, velvet-ty red. It is Henry Kelsey, one of the Explorer roses. I moved it from the rose mound a number of years ago, and I think it has finally ceased to sulk and has settled in to be a stunner. It is away back at the east side of the property so you have to go for a walk in order to see it. I often forget about it when I am doing photos and have to make a special trip. It's been blooming full belt since about the first week of July.

          The rosa gallica Tuscan Superb is doing a lot of blooming also, and it's a slightly deeper deep red, or slightly purplish red. (This photo does it no favours.) I wanted to be able to paint our house the colour of this rose, but I don't think paint comes

in colours this subtle.
     The rose Snowy Pavement has been great, both in blooming and in spreading itself about. This shot is of the one on the south side of the ring-around-the-rosey bed. Lovely subtle lilac shade and a terrific scent. I had pruned the original one on the rose mound last fall, and it is coming back well.

The rosa multiflora was NOT blooming for the wedding, but it bloomed very successfully since. I had pruned it very hard back in the fall and again in spring, and it took this as an excuse to become HUGE. I am leaving it alone for now, as the hips are a great addition to Christmas decorations, but I'll never again worry that I've been too harsh with it. It can take it very well. This shot is when it's in full bloom, and all that green on top is the next year's canes. It doesn't re-bloom (or at least not very much) on the old ones.

     In addition to admiring the roses I have been trying to get all of the plants I've collected or sown into the ground. It has been a challenge to say the very least. For example, I planted rose campion from seed, and they have been very successful in both germination and in surviving being pricked out. As a result I must have planted out 7 or 8 dozen of them. They are biennials, so I put them into the cutting bed of the vegetable garden, to grow on, to be placed in the flower garden next year. However, I have some rose campion planted out two years ago, blooming now, and I'm not sure if they will survive to bloom again next year. If they do I shall be over-run with rose campion. I may have to sell them or give them away.

      This week I've been developing "Primuland", a special area for my extensive primula collection (do you see what I did there?).  It's facing south and quite near the road, and, in summer, quite shady, except at mid-day. The weeping purple beech and the chamaecyparis were planted there a couple of years ago.
      I hope that before the trees leaf out the primulas will have a chance to bloom in the sunshine. I also put in a stephanandra, a creeping rhododendron, and some sedum, creeping phlox  and erica carnera seedlings I generated this spring. And I stuck in a couple of pots of blooming things and some pinks for colour.
       In the area below the yellow birch I am planning to add a bed of the orange flowers that are scattered around here and there amongst all the pink ones. I find them a bit jarring and think they would do better off on their own. I expect I shall find I have far more of them than the space will hold! However there is a possibility of digging out a matching bed on the other side of this little lawn area (perhaps I should say former lawn area? Yeah, more lawn gone!) and more oranges/yellows could go there. I know I have a couple of daylilies including two big thickets of Franz Hals, and my geums should go there too. There are others but I have to wait until they have finished blooming before moving. Just now I am smothering the grass with carpet in those areas.

Phew what a scorcher!

It's not really hot (like in BC, where there are 60+ forest fires) but it IS humid, with rain forecast for this afternoon and tonight. It's the kind of day where sweat runs down your face just while you're walking.
     The garden is doing very well. The Kousa is still blooming away (what good value) and just lighting up the area under the canopy of the white oak. Roses are coming out - the red one on the trellis,  Henry Kelsey. Dublin Bay is planted there too but doesn't do much. Though that bud in front, with the reddish leaves, might well be DB. Never say die in a garden.

Henry Kelsey on the trellis

        The white rosa multiflora has just started to bloom, I hacked it back quite severely this spring so it is not the mound of bloom it usually is; but it is putting on a lot of growth for next year. It's a lot like raspberries - blooms on last year's growth but the branches from the years before that have no bloom at all and eventually they die. Thus necessitating a clearing out.
     I have three clematis out - Nelly Moser by the deck, and Elsa Spath and Niobe in the beds by the lilacs, beside the path to the vegetable garden. The peony is full out as well - not a great colour combination, but I'll forgive a clematis anything.

Clematis Elsa Spath with peony

     I have lost the Nelly Moser by the door - last year it was huge, and this year it's gone. I have finally decided, too, that it does not matter AT ALL what kind of pruning it says on the package is required - in my garden they ALL die back to the roots every year, and begin again from the beginning AND everyone I know who has clematis says the same. The tiny dried out THREADS of branches that are left in the spring could not and do not sustain life. I am going to look for some more and different kinds- Joyce has a Markham's Pink that blooms really early and with quite a different bloom to these.
     I have had linum (flax plant) in the garden by the house on the West side for a couple of years, pretty but never blooming, but this year I was surprised to find one of them in full bloom! Quite pretty and delicate, as is the harebell, also on the west side. I feel I should be moving the similar things together as they may not have much impact on their own with rowdier and showier plants.

Linum usitatissimum.

Campanula rotundifolia

Aren't they sweet? The harebell had expanded greatly from the tiny pot I bought at The Brickworks three summers ago.

     The campanula crowd is expanding in my garden, though I seem to be specializing in blue ones only. Ah well. They are not orange. I planted a bunch of dwarf ones from seed, and I don't know anything about them, like how dwarf and if they are blue. But I have some dwarf blue ones from last year and they are TINY! I shall have to get going on the Alpine area at once, and move them all in. Decidedly more bloom than plant. How gorgeous. 

Vacationing at Home

The garden, decorated for my birthday.

        With my momentous birthday behind me, I am continuing on my stress-free lifestyle, concentrating on growing things and making things, and forgetting I ever had sleepless nights!
        My brother and sister surprised me by coming for my birthday! So we have been doing summer things - many trips to the beach, eating out, visiting friends - with a bit of garden work thrown in.
     The garden was looking its best for the birthday party. There were lots of roses out, and some of the clematis blooms managed to hold on until then as well. The mystery rose was doing its stuff splendidly!
      One beautiful present I got was another F.J. Grootendorst rose, so I put it in the shrub bed to the west, under the linden a bit, but in pretty much full sun. Hope it does well there. It is a beautiful healthy one. The Pink Grootendorst in the "Ring-around-the-Rosey" bed is blooming! Lovely.
      Anne has bought me some plants as well - another rhododendron (which I'll put with the first one, I think) and, the thing I've been wanting for a year, a Sambucus "Black Lace" - I think it will go on the east side of the shrub bed, across from the golden elder.  Symmetry!

Climbing Rose - maybe "Henry Kelsey".

      The rose I put at the back of the vegetable bed a couple of years ago, and which bloomed for the first time last year, is doing its stuff at the moment. I am not sure if it is the Explorer climber "Henry Kelsey", or suckers from the root stock. I don't care. It is blooming lovely. There is a slight scent, but its main claim to fame is the glorious colour - a really, really dark, velvety, red.
     My eryngeums are doing well also - the first one is "Blue Glitter" and then I got two more, both "Blue Hobbit", which I put in front of the first. So, I have a small clump in front of the lilacs, near that mystery clematis (which didn't bloom this year, alas!). They come out green and then turn blue. So neat.

The one on the left is Blue Glitter and the one on the right is Blue Hobbit, not yet turned blue. This was a few days ago, and they are both blue now. It is interesting to note that the Blue Glitter is supposed to get 80 cm tall while the Blue Hobbit maxes out at 30 cm. They are pretty much the same size at the moment.
      There were some roots around the pot of the first one, which I pulled off and discarded at first. Then I realized (looking at the little leaves attached) that they were baby ones! So I rescued them and potted them up, and two have survived and are growing, Must get them into the ground somewhere soon, so they get a chance to get growing before the winter. I could become a specialist in Eryngeum! Not much chance, as Kent was selling them for $4.00. Everyone must have one by now.

Awaiting Better Weather...

We've just had a siege of terrible wet stuff for over a week - cloudy, warm and drizzly. There were a couple of downpours as well, so the garden was well watered. But it's been drizzly-dreadful since my b'day, and I hadn't had a chance to use my new present, an eating-outdoors table and 4 chairs. However, we had a short window of opportunity last night and gave eating out a try. It was quite cool - both for the eaters and the "eats" - (man I hate that word...). But I can say I've done it, a week after my birthday, at last.

The garden continues apace, even without the sun. There are many roses out, and the Henry Kelsey on the rose trellis is a sight to behold. He's quite visible from the house, given that he's such a bright red. This morning the Dublin Bay was blooming as well...they are really quite alike in bloom, so I doubt that anyone will notice that there are two different roses on the trellis - though their foliage varies quite a bit.

And, news flash! I had moved my first Henry Kelsey from the rose mound to the hedgerow on the east of the vegetable garden, the year before last, and he struggled a bit and then croaked. However, I've been keeping watch, because he started to sucker up from the rootstock late last year. And today it was blooming (or rather, budding) and it looks like it's a very similar rose's root - maybe even ownroot (though there *did* seem to be a bud union) - in any case, it's a brilliant red, and single-looking. I'm so pleased. Now I have to get it a climbing apparatus of some sort.

I finally gave up on finding potato seed and filled up the vegetable garden with my own tomato seedlings - all Roma, so look out! There will be much salsa made. And perhaps even tomato sauce. There must be 5 dozen plants in all - one Duchess, 6 Lemon Boy, 6 Sweet Million, 6 Early Girl and the rest Roma.

The John Thompson by the front door is blooming beautifully - he is such a good repeater, and quite early, thanks to his rugosa heritage. I am kept busy deadheading, but this is not a big duty when he's producing so well. Of course the dreadful wet weather has made the blooms a bit of a sticky mess, but SOON this will be over (dry for at least the coming week, although cooler until Thursday or Friday).


I started to scrape the paint on the South end of the house -it is its turn to be painted this year - and, thanks to all this wet weather, the stuff is coming off most easily. I think it will need at least a week of dry and sunny before I would dare to put on any stain, though. The shingles feel like sponges.

Summer's here

I've been busy! Some knitting, a bit of dancing, and now that the weather has cleared up, a bit of gardening too. Yesterday I did some deadheading on the lilac hedge (a monumental task, as they are now 'way over my head) and some planting of annuals. Taking away, giving.  

Roses are starting to come out - nothing of particular note, just Blanc de Coubert, Philemon Cochet, and the rugosas - including Hansa. I have planted a few new ones this year, but not on the rose mound - in the flower beds and along the edge of the lawn by the road.  I did buy a new Explorer - a red climber called Henry Kelsey. Robert Osborne (of Cornhill Nursery) speaks highly of Henry in his book. I planted him behind the rose trellis (with Dublin Bay in front), so I hope that 1. Both survive, bloom, and confound onlookers with two sorts of red blooms, apparently from one plant; or 2. One or the other survives and fills in the trellis. My money's on Henry. While I was planting Henry I managed to break a bloom off an iris, which I brought in and put in water. I wanted to see what colour it was because I bought it at a church yard sale last year and had never seen the bloom. It's warped because the slugs had got at it. Next year I'll keep an eye on it. 

In knitting I'm scundered with socks (toe up is doing my head in!) so I'm looking for other options, including fingerless gloves, entrelac and a lace shawl project that requires more concentration than I have, apparently. I've had to start it again.