So! November has come and it is time for the Showing of the Roses!

This was a really weird year for my garden.  It started with a positively luxuriously wet spring, wherein simply everything was green.  But that then evolved into the usual Hot and Dry Summer, which was further compounded by my being away and not watering for large swaths of that time.  And then we’ve had an exceptionally mild fall, but I think most of the plants were a bit too dizzied with what came before to manage to do much with that.

I did lose one rose since last year, my poor Blueberry Hill, which had looked to be doing fine until about February when it just decided it was done.  And two of my roses, though still alive, decided this year was just too much to deal with to even think about blooming.  Never-the-less, I still have blooms to show for 20 roses (plus (only, alas) two re-bloomers this year).

And this year I’m going to attempt the crazy and see if I can show them off to you in blooming order!

Starting mid-May

Austrian Copper:  Despite living in a fairly cold part of the garden, Austrian Copper is always my very first rose to bloom, starting in mid-May, and she’s pretty darned glorious.  Single-petaled, two-toned, deep orange, with pretty, yellow stamens.  Or, some places she’s yellow all over.  If only we could have her again for a re-bloom, she’d be 100% perfect.

Late-May, into early June

Hi:  Hi is very, very tiny, and (so far at least) also very ephemeral.  This year I managed to catch a picture or two proving that she does have blooms, but they open and fall so quickly, I’ve only got the buds for you to see here, especially since that quick bloom was at basically the very start of the season and done.  I did move her last year, so this year she was still getting re-settled.  Maybe I’ll have better quick-bloom-catch for her next year.

Scabiosa:  Scabiosa gets going toward the end of May but takes her time with her bloom season a bit more than our first two roses.  She’ll usually cycle through a number of blooms, but doesn’t much like to have more than one or two open at a time.  Which is fine; she smells heavenly and does not stint in sharing her fragrance, so it’s lovely that she’ll dole it out for us over the span of a few weeks.

Louise Odier:  Louse Odier also smells lovely, but isn’t quite as generous with her fragrance or (not yet at least—I’ve had her for just 3 years so far, and she’s trapped in a bit of a dry spot near a big spruce tree) her number of blooms.  But, she’s one of the first roses I have to bloom that really shows off that pretty, classic-rose form with plenty of petals.

Apple Jack:  Apple Jack is semi-double, shade tolerant (a major boon in my garden), and I’ve got her in two spots.  She does not like things hot and dry, so was very pleased with our fabulously rainy spring, and covered herself in lovely blooms (which, alas, the neighbors probably had a better view of than me, as the fence beside her most vigorous planting there is just to the south.  When she’s blooming, she makes my garden feel a bit like a fairy forest, and I love her.

Original Garden Orange:  Lastly for the late-May bloomers is the very lovely, unknown rose original to the house when I moved in.  Though she starts in late May, she’s both abundant and reasonably heat tolerant, and this year kept going through late June.  Though, she’s not exactly reserved and likes to hang around fully blown much, much more than in the demure, just-opened posture that otherwise shows off her colors best.  Also, you may note, she’s in a slightly tricky spot for getting pictures of.

Starting about a week into June

(The first few weeks of June is the time for the roses, and it’s tricky to pin down what was really blooming first, especially as I take most of my pictures on the weekends.  And, of course, some of these roses bloom very quickly and are done, while others last for several weeks, seeing some of those other roses come and go.  So, below is a rough ordering.)

Original Garden Pink: This small, pink rose is original to the house when I moved in.  She blooms for about a week-ish, and then is done with that nonsense (she also lives perilously close to where the rabbits like to come through, so she’s holding her own as best she can).

New Red (root-stock duplicate?):  I think I only got one bloom from this rose last year, but this year I got several, and as you can see they were fairly scrumptious, though they didn’t hang around for terribly long.  This rose showed up as a volunteer (as best I can tell), and is very like the one that burst up out of my Austrian Copper root stock a few years back (and which is close by).  The only differences so far seem to be that this one has a propensity for a beauty-mark-esque white streak buried in the petals, and so far is not as big and vigorous as the other, but we’ll see how things progress.

Original Garden Red Climber:  As I’ve mentioned in the past, when I moved into this house, there were two gorgeous red climbing roses planted, one at the front of the house, and one on the fence by the side gate.  The one at the front has not fared wonderfully well under my care (though I feel like I ought to be allowed to blame some of that on the crab-apple planted next to the driveway that gets bigger and bigger every year and gobbles up most of the morning sunlight (which is her only sunlight).  Never-the-less, both plantings keep on blooming with lots of very, very red and long-lasting flowers.  Oddly, this year, the side-fence planting bloomed a darker color this year than usual, at least in the first flush—something strange with the weather lately?  Although this rose got going at the usual time this year, there was no re-bloom later, alas, alas.

Queen of Sweden:  Queen of Sweden is such a tease.  I’ve had her for three years now, and her blooms are so pretty.  But they don’t hang around super long, and she only offers a couple before being done for the season.  …yet, I live in hope.

April Moon:  April Moon is such a great trooper, and I hope she’ll keep it up.  She’s stuck in two spots of my much-too-shady middle flower bed (where her glowing, white flowers are ever-so-striking and gorgeous).  Her blooms are classically beautiful, always last long enough to be well admired, and aren’t too few-and-far between.  If I were a better rose gardener, I’d make sure to make her so happy.  As it is, I just admire her as much as she’ll let me.

Darlow’s Enigma:  Darlow’s Enigma is a whimsically pretty, thorny, grabby menace.  However, she puts up with living in a very shady corner of my garden, and is mostly thwarted from eating anyone’s coat-sleeve if they come too near.  She lives next to some plum bushes and fits right in there, blossom-style-wise.

Austrian Copper Red-root-stock:  So, Austrian Copper doesn’t bloom as long as I’d wish.  But, her root-stock sprung up several years back as a very healthy rose-bush of her own, and picks up blooming only a week-or-two after Austrian Copper is done, and then keeps going for a solid three-week run (although this year the onset of Hot-Dry summer coinciding with my absence (and the absence of watering) for a week, may have been why she didn’t last quite as long as usual.  She’s dark red, and gratifyingly well-endowed with blooms.

Starting mid-June

Ebb Tide:  This was not Ebb Tide’s favorite year.  She made a very good show of it to start things off.  But the weather and watering schedule were weird, and all that moisture at the start of the season was more favorable to the crowding in of vining weeds than it was to her.  So, this year she just bloomed once and said done with it—better luck next year.  (Sorry to pout—she’s so pretty and purple, at least when she’s feeling herself.)

Sweet Spirit:  Sweet Spirt was trapped in the same overgrown flower bed as Ebb Tide and seemed to take a similar view of things this year.  Also, she seemed particularly put out by the heat as the summer was heating up, and I couldn’t quite catch her with blooms that weren’t already partially wilted.

Dublin Bay:  Dublin Bay is the reddest rose that ever was red.  In this, my third year with her, I again got but a single blossom.  Alas, the timing of the blossom corresponded to the time-of-sudden-drought, and so she did not last as ridiculously long as last year.  But, true to form, she did at least start out as quite the rose’s rose.

Teasing Georgia:  This is my fourth year with Teasing Georgia and she’s just getting better and better.  Although she certainly was teasing, having pronounced buds at the end of May, but no real blooms until mid-June.  Still, those blooms are worth the wait, and I eagerly await more next year.  I’d say the prettiest-rose-of-this-year contest comes down to April Moon and Teasing Georgia.

El Catala:  El Catala is an extremely handsome rose, who was very not pleased with the summer heat.  She tried her best, but so it sometimes goes.  (However, she did pull off a re-bloom in August, so she’s no slouch.)

Awakening:  Awakening…I bought Awakening advertised as a climber, and in this, my third year with her, she remains stubbornly less than two feet tall. Her blooms hint at being quite pretty, if only there were enough of them and/or they’d stick around long enough for proper admiration.  Fingers crossed for next year.

Knock Out: Knock Out was a no-show this year, though I’ve got her in two spots.  They are two pretty shady spots, but I usually get a couple blooms from her…we’ll see for next year.

Crown Princess Margareta: Crown Princess Margareta would appreciate it if I were in the habit of weeding, like, ever.  She did not deign to try to bloom this year.  Next year we shall have to see.

July

(Silly reader, Anna’s roses do not bloom in July.)

August

El Catala re-bloom:  And here is El Catala soldiering on with her rebloom in August.  She had her sea legs under her a little bit better by this point and was able to show off her pretty form a bit better.  That two-tone magenta-red and silver is always so striking.

September

April Moon re-bloom:  Just one of my April Moon re-bloomed this year, and with just a single blossom.  But, it was a really pretty blossom, which started out with the reminder that April Moon is not merely a white rose, but goes beyond that, starting with a glowing yellow that ages to a cool white, all the shades and humors of the moon.

October

Peace:  Poor beleaguered Peace got moved to a better spot this year, but she’s not yet comfy there.  She did feel much better, though, when the temperatures dropped back down in the fall, and managed to bloom before the frost swooped in.  I adore her gentle-sunrise coloring, and have fingers crossed I can get her to feel like a proper rose in her new spot starting next year.