Pat Austin's about to give birth!

wow.

There are ten more buds on the Pat Austin. This is the juiciest one.

This is almost as exciting as giving birth!



For a while this afternoon, I was afraid to leave the deck lest Pat Austin's bud burst open while I was gone. I guess roses don't bloom quite that fast, even though they look like it.

After counting more buds on the Pat Austin rose, I decided to make a chart to keep track of them all. I call it my Rose Maintenance chart. It has columns for the date, number of buds, number of blooms and "Troubles & Fixes." I'm clueless and a little scared about what might go in that last column. Probably stuff like aphid treatment, fertilizer and Beheading by Deer. ugh.

We counted all our buds. As of today, April 28, we have...

On the Deck: Fair Bianca #1 has 11 buds, Pat Austin has 11 buds and Sceptre'd Isle #1 has 11.

In the backyard: New Dawn at the bottom of the deck stairs has 0, newly planted Graham Thomas, Jude the Obscure and Eden each have 0. Marking the place where my Prince Charming is supposed to serenade me is Blush Noisette with an almost obscene ...drum roll.... 92 buds!!! 92!!! We counted twice to make sure that number was right and laughed at the sheer absurdity.

In the Side Yard: Zepherine Drouhin has 2.

In the Front Yard: Fair Bianca #2 has 19 buds, Fair Bianca #3 has 7 and the Sceptre'd Isle #2 by the mailbox has 2.

I had removed the tags from the three roses by the road and unfortunately did not glue the little rose pictures accurately on my paper layout. Therefore, we don't have a clue which rose is which. I didn't want to write the wrong numbers on my chart so I grabbed a nearby piece of bark and wrote the rose bud count on it. Mystery Rose #1 has 3 buds, Mystery Rose #2 has 0 and Mystery Rose #3 has 0. Mystery Rose #3 had a lot of eaten leaves. Grrr. I must get some insecticides before the problem spreads. We couldn't find any visible evidence of what ate the leaves. I won't know till they bloom which rose is James Galway, Queen of Denmark or the last Sceptre'd Isle.

That's a grand total of 158 rose buds! Mmm, mmm, mmm, I can almost smell them now. Splendid.