MORE Roses

This bottom picture is of the yellow rose vine. These are a traditional rose, in that they take the normal care - dead-heading flowers, have to watch for bugs and frost, need to feed regularly etc. The current bunch of flowers are in full bloom. As long as I prune the branches after each flower dies, I'll get more flowers later this summer.

The top picture is of a new variety of roses called a "knock-out" rose. Not sure why they're called that, but they are next to NO work. No need to dead-head the dead flowers, so far bugs don't like them much, you CAN feed them to get MORE flowers, but they seem to bloom fine without. As you can see, they come in a bush form rather than a vine, and the flowers are quite small - maybe an inch when fully bloomed. The color we have is pale pink (which husband just LOVES. ). If you want roses but afraid of the work, buy these roses. They couldn't be easier.

ROSES!!!

Well last week was the FIRST rose and this week it's the whole BUNCH of roses on the rose vine! This vine has only been planted for 20 months, and its already outgrown the trellis that it's on. There are so many more flowers than I thought there'd be. Gotta love Miracle Grow! I have to decide if I'm going to get a new trellis this year or make due with it for this year before I work through some of those branches in the trellis. Even with gloves, those thorns hurt!

First Rose of the Summer

This is the first rose this summer from the climbing rose vine along side the garage. By the looks of things though, it will have plenty of company soon! I've been fertilizing it and that, along with the good (if cool) weather this spring seems to have helped it immensely. There are already several dozen buds on the vines. I'm just concerned that the trellis I put it on is already too small for it - and it's only the second summer. This vine itself grew so much at the end of last summer - one branch in particular grew more than 3 feet in a week - that it's likely to look like man-eating plant from that musical whose name escapes me at the moment...

As glad as I am to see the rose vine blooming, I'm really excited to see what happens with the climbing hydrangeas. I have two of those, one on either side of the climbing rose vine. Neither of them bloomed last year because of that freak snow storm in mid-April. The plants themselves survived, but not in good enough condition to bloom. So this years blooms will be the first time blooming. I have no idea what to expect. Both plants are doing well. One needs to be worked into the trellis better than it is, but I'm going to wait a few more days for my arthritis flare-up to pass before I try that. Stooping that low for that long doesn't seem like a good idea.

The regular hydrangea bushes are doing quite well. One is bigger than the other and has more blooms, so I think they must do better in a shadier area, because that's the only difference I can see.

I'll be sure to post more pictures as thing continue to bloom. I love the warm weather.

Front Garden - as promised

Here's a picture of the Korean lilac bush in full bloom. Of course it's raining today (hard!), so the rain will likely wash off all the flowers. So I took a picture of it so I can have it to enjoy!

Hope you do too!

Front Garden

This is a close up of a flowering shrub in our front garden. It's called a Korean lilac bush, or so I'm told. It's kind of like a lilac bush if Jackson Pollack had designed it. Right now it has these splotches of lilaccy purple buds all over the place. Last year that's all we got - buds. Since this is a bush I'm not familiar with, I'm not sure if that's what's supposed to happen or not.

You see, early last spring we had VERY warm weather - promptly followed by 6 inches of snow. This on our then brand-new garden. So, I'm still learning things about the plants in our garden because last year was kind of a bust, garden wise. So, I decided to take a picture of the lilac bush now, because even if these buds don't bloom it's still really beautiful. I love this bush. (and yes I just mixed politics with gardening). If the buds actually bloom, I'll be sure to take another picture of it in bloom and I'll post that too.

The Japanese maple tree are both doing really well, as are the climbing hyrdrangeas. Two of the boxwoods are dying as is one of the lavendar bushes. But c'est le vie. I didn't care for the boxwoods anyway and now I know that growing lavendar is an iffy thing at best in Ohio. Not sure why.

Does anyone know of a variety of lavendar that grows well in Ohio? I'm not terribly concerned about the scent (which I know some are), I'm more concerned about it being winter hardy so I don't have to replant some every year. Happy gardening!

Garden

This is a picture of my front garden. My husband and I have been here nearly four years now, but the garden is only about a year and a half old. The house was a new build, and we had other priorities the first couple of years. This spring the garden (so far) looks great. I can't take much credit for it though, since we hired someone to put it in.

I have arthritis in several places and that makes heavy labor (like installing a new garden in clay soil) impossible. But the garden was designed so that there's not much upkeep to it, so I can keep it up and get some exercise too. It's important to get outside after spending all day indoors in cubicle-land for work.

The yellow flowers you see are daffodils, yellow hyacinth (which I didn't know even existed!) and tulips. The crocuses (crocii?) have come and gone already and some purple and white tulips and purple irises still to come. The bulbed plants bloom from early spring to early summer, then the bushes and climbing vines take over - rose bushes, hydrangea bushes and climbing roses and hydrangeas. So there's some color in the garden from early spring through September. I'm really happy with it. Still want to put a roof over the front porch at some point, then the front yard will be done.

Then the BACK yard. We're going for more of a Japanese garden feel for the back yard.