More Frivolity

I’m no longer just chatting with my next-door neighbour over the fence and she often comes into my garden now, to admire and smell my roses. Recently, at the first hello, she flew threw my gate and straight past me and continued along the most direct path through my packed out cottage garden border that lead straight towards Mr. Lincoln. She saw his bloom from her place, hard to miss: its huge, and obviously longed to stick her nose into it. From the expression on her face I took she got exactly what was expected.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Planted: Bare rooted 25 June 2012
Photo taken: 8 August 2012

Jac I gave my boss and his partner a cd disc of every rose that I had bred, I called it My Lifes Work. She rang about two days later saying that they kept looking at the pics and how it made them happy inside by looking at them. When you put it in a nutshell , thats whats its all about.

Wow, your life’s work; that CD must be a real treasure. Why not make all of us happy inside, and post a couple here and there?

There is over 130 Jac, might use to much space.

jac are you sure that photo above is a a Mr Lincoln........it just doesn't seem to have enough petals for a lincoln...just curious

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Oh beautiful roses Jac and beautiful scenery too , you certainly are in a lovely location ......

It may have been on a weaker stem therefore loosing some petals Neptune.

Ozroz, one at a time!

Ah, Neptune, yours is beautiful and bushy and has sooo many blooms! How old is it?
Pretty sure mine is ML, and fills out like yours after a couple of days. The blooms are huge; I had two already, at 10-day intervals, and there are two more shoots emerging, one from an existing cane and one from the base. The first turned quite pink over time in the hot sun, but the second kept its colour really well; must be the weather. The new shoots and leaves are brownish red.

Maree, that’s Neptune’s beautiful rose and scenery, mine only produces one bloom at a time at the moment, but I can’t wait now for it to grow bushy like that.

Sorry , there Neptune , should read the names properly shouldn't i , i have to say , i think i'm very envious of that red rose bush , its LOVELY ... I have Oklahoma, Papa , and Firefighter in red , but your ML looks better than any of mine . How old is your ML Neptune ? and has anyone ever grown Sir Donald Bradman , have read that its supposed to be good ..

2 yrs maree...I bet you love your firefighter....I love mine...

I’ve got Papa, and had my eye on Oklahoma and Sir Donald Bradman. Slower papa is just starting to show some near black buds.

Wow, Neptune. Oh look, my secateurs just hopped on my shoulder.Like a pirate and his parrot we are beadily eyeing off those blooms.

Here Fido...here boy....."Guard"....

Oh Betsy , Betsy , Betsy !!!! lol haha , Jac , my Papa ia heading into its third year and has been nothing but a pain in the butt , slow growing , not many blooms and die-back all the time , i've kept it because i've heard it is slow growing and the fragrance is exceptional , but boy is it trying my patience , maybe it just doesn't like my garden ....

Maree, my Papa, although a lot slower than ML, already has three near black buds that are about to open any day now, lots of bushy leaves, and one new shoot emerging from the base. Where ML produced only one bud at a time, P took longer, but produced three at the same time. He’s in direct sunlight; will post the first photo here a.s.a.p.
I got these two locally (and had Oklahoma on my original order), because I’m chasing a big velvety red with black rims: I fell in love with a rosebush that grows near our library. It’s huge and the blooms and fragrance are pure bliss. I spoke to the owners (who caught me trespassing on their driveway to smell it) and they didn’t know what it was; it was already there when they moved in. In spite of obvious neglect, dead branches, covered in old hips etc., and they never feed or water it, the bush has reached the window of a raised Queenslander and still produces blooms.
It’s definitely not ML, too bright red at first and truing too pinkish over time (but never actually pink).
Can’t wait for P and sitting on the edge now, looks to be the right one though with all that black.

Jac , i'll keep perservering with Papa , after reading your post ,how old is your Papa , maybe mine isn't a healthy bush ....

I planted Papa on 27 May 2012, about a week before my big order arrived and got the e-mail notice that it was dispatched. I got a huge adrenalin rush and needed to go and do something to cool down again. So I got Papa, Gertrude Jekyll, Graham Thomas, and Pat Austin all a bit earlier than everything else.
ML was planted nearly one month later, on 25 June 2012 and already had two huge blooms where most of my other roses still only have closed buds. ML and Papa both came out of bags and are now in pots, in positions where they receive full sunlight all day long – no shade around here.
Papa not doing well in his third year sounds wrong, but good on you for persevering with him. Maybe he’s just in the wrong spot?

He's in the front of the garden bed and all the other roses are doing fine , i think he may just be a dodgy plant , he's very prone to die-back too ....

Maree, that sounds dire; you don’t want a sickly plant occupying prime real estate in your garden. Maybe you’ll have more luck with another Papa, and let this one recover somewhere out of sight. RosyTeesh had a lot of success with shifting some of her roses from beds into pots; maybe that’ll work for him.

Anybody, remember I mentioned how my girlfriends wouldn’t get into roses with me, and no matter what I said about their versatility or how easy they were to grow or how I described their beauty and fragrance, they would stay completely cold?
Well I’ve been e-mailing my photos on a regular basis (without any comments, just the photos to rub it in a bit) and when I visited one of them recently, her husband who saw all the e-mails got bitten by the rose-bug and there were already eight roses in the garden; and he’s planning on getting more.

He lifted up all the rose paraphernalia, spray pump, bug sprays, outrageously expensing liquid booster, etc., to show me one by one, looking like he just won the lottery. And when I flipped over the Valencia he planted and told him about the size and fragrance it would have, he looked like Gollum in his last scene when he finally gets that ring back (my precious …). My friend just held her head and walked away.

Jac you are right , it is prime real estate , especially seeing as i don't have a whole lot of real estate in the garden , Papa's last year to get it right , maybe i should shake the stick at him . I was thinking maybe you should change your name to the " Rose Warrior " if you can subtley get a friends husband to get bitten by the rose bug , then i think you deserve a title lol !!!!

Yeah, I’m really proud of that one …

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Valencia, HT
Planted 1 June 2012
First bloom 26 August 2012

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I choose Valencia to get some yellow into my garden and because it was offered as part of the Fragrant Collection where I ordered. I didn’t get the whole collection, just the yellow.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

It does have a very nice strong fragrance, but only when it just opens, at least here in the heat. However, it more than compensates for loosing some fragrance as time passes: it’s the most gigantic rose I’ve ever seen.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Visitors comment on Valencia more than on any other rose in my garden, and it’s always: wow, look at the size of it, beautiful!

I have taken another photo that shows some scale, but that was for my friends who said they couldn’t get excited about roses, and I’m not sure if it was appropriate to post a photo that could be taken as being a little rude.

Wonderful choices of avatars, everyone. I need that Augusta Luise, absolutely. Tantau roses like me (Meilland roses hate me, just to balance things)
Jac, I definitely will throw a lot of BB on Iceberg today - possibly over the top of its crown . Thanks for those great pix of Valencia, too - poss my favourite all-round rose, second only to Fragrant Cloud.

Jac , after just inspecting my Papa , it has gone to die back heaven . I pruned it and cut off all the dead and diseased canes and guess what no new shoots , just a dead looking stump , never was a good bush . Good news though for the birds though , think i might put in a water feature for the birds in that spot .....