Jude the Obscure Bloomed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow! It bloomed!

Actually, I have no idea when it bloomed the first time. It probably bloomed late at night when I was sleeping just to get even for all the mistreatment I gave it. Then it dropped all its petals right before I looked that way. I've seen Jude the Obscure petals around the bush a couple times in the past month but nary a rose.


Yesterday I looked down from the deck and saw two buds. Woohoo! Upon closer inspection, I saw that a bug had eaten a big hole clear through to the center of the bud. Grrr. I considered pinching the bud off but then decided to let it go another couple days before I plucked it off. I’m SO glad I didn’t pluck that bud off!

Today, I looked down from the deck and saw... a rose in full bloom! The Jude had bloomed! I raced down the stairs while calling to the boys "There's a new rose! There's a new rose!"

Ah, how lovely Jude the Obscure is! I will definitely plant more next spring. The scent is unreal. It's a luscious sweet, peachy-almond, apple tea fragrance with a touch of mango. If ever I wanted to eat a rose, this one is it. No wonder some bug munched it.

The color is a creamy pale peach. I was expecting an ivory rose but the pale peach with hints of sunlight coming from within will look nice next to the Graham Thomas, if ever the Graham survives.

The Fair Bianca on the deck is rebounding and the Scepter’d Isle and Pat Austin on the deck are healthy. Roses are glorious. Simply glorious.

My eyes got all misty when I smelled the Jude. It reminds me of a place long ago. Perhaps walking through an apple orchard in the spring? Perhaps standing under my parents’ apple tree at the top of the hill on a cool summer’s eve? Even if I can’t bring back the visual memory of an event, I’m driven to bring back a scent from long ago. A scent is a living connection to something I can’t touch or hold or keep.

I’m a little wistful thinking about fall being just around the corner. There were too many days this summer when I had to be away from home. Plants didn’t get watered, pruned or talked to as much as they should have. I’m feeling all angsty and depressed now that winter means no more gardening. Do other gardeners feel this way? I’ve never dreaded the cold breath of winter before. In fact, winter was always my favorite season. This depression is a first for me. I’ve got such a doom and gloom attitude and it’s no fun at all. What do gardeners do all winter?

This whole adventure started last January. I guess I can wait till January of 07 and continue the rose adventure all over again. Only this time, I’ll know what to expect when a box arrives full of bare root rose bushes in the middle of icy February. Last year’s purchase of 15 rose bushes was on a whim. This year’s purchase of 20 rose bushes will be 100% intentional. I plan on having 100 rose bushes on this property within the next 5 years.

Five days later...

Friday the 18th was the wedding. Today, five days later, I'm still exhausted from the wedding. Last night we took lots of decorations and orchids to the newlyweds' apartment and decorated it. It's amazing how different a living space looks with greenery. Just one big fern placed in a corner makes a huge difference. We hung ivy garlands above the windows and honeycomb bells, strands of pearls and lots of flowers here and there around the apartment. The newlyweds will love it! As we worked, daughter said we were "reverse vandalizing" the place. Funny.

For the wedding, we wired together long garlands of real ivy that we pulled up from the side yard. We hung the ivy garlands above the front window and the sliding glass door in the dining room. We placed ivy garland over the top of the china cabinets in the dining room and living room. We also wound the garland around the railing in the living room and hung white, wired-ribbon bows. It looked gorgeous.

I wish we could have afforded real flowers but the extraordinary silk ones we found looked amazing. There were flowers everywhere! Daughter helped make the bride's and maid-of-honor's bouquets from a combination of real and silk flowers. I figured out how to decoratively wrap the stems with ribbon by following book directions.

The magenta orchids did not match a single thing. So we used the four vases of orchids to brighten up dark corners. That worked very nicely and the shadowy corners helped tone down the bright magenta color so it didn't clash with the barely pink roses. Everything was so lovely.

Here is a photo of the cake, two vanilla layers with a lemon-orange cheesecake layer in the middle, taken after I finished decorating it the night before the wedding. The pastillage roses turned out perfect. The cake was stored in layers in son's big refrigerator and delivered to the restaurant the morning of the wedding.

I like how the cake turned out. I made enough cake for leftovers and the restaurant staff hoped for a little bite. I left them a big chunk to share. Son wanted his favorite, simple birthday frosting on the cake, loaded with shortening and butter, so that's what I put on the cake. The staff made no comment so they probably thought the icing was appalling. I do make a melt-in-your-mouth French Buttercream that has a whole pound of butter and NO shortening and NO grainy powdered sugar but that's not what the bride and groom wanted. Life is sweet when you keep is simple.



Here's a photo of the bride and groom sitting on the deck after the wedding. Just one day after this photo was taken, the Pat Austin rose had dropped her peachy petals. Two days after the wedding, the Cascadia petunias were so anemic that I had to drastically prune them. It is very fortunate that the deck looked so nice the day of the wedding.

The Fair Biancas on the deck and in the front yard had some perfect, bug-free blooms. But no rose was so fair as the bride and no flower would give me as much pleasure as seeing my son radiant with joy with his new wife. God is good to me.

Three Days till the Wedding - Orchid Overkill!

It is 1:11 am Tuesday night, August 15 and I'm tired. This evening the orchids arrived. I had no idea 60 orchids were soooo many! I had no idea magenta was so bright! We have the orchids crowded in four vases but they could easily be spread out amongst 10 vases.

Alas, I think we have Orchid Overkill. The orchids are bright magenta colored. If I spread them out over the house, our guests will be overwhelmed with so much magenta. So I'll have to think of a way to tone down the intensity.

I'm seriously considering sticking some of the orchids in the dirt in the geranium planters on the deck. "Why yes," I'll say to the guests "aren't those orchids lovely? They are really pretty to use in floral arrangements. Just look at how many there are! Why, there are so many, I would be delighted to send a few home with you."

Four Days till the Wedding!

I had to count out the days on my fingers. That must mean something but I don't know what.

Yesterday I took time out from making icing flowers and did some work with real flowers. The wedding is so close and there's so much to do so I'm not sure why I went out to the deck in the first place.

The first thing I saw was a planter that had the remains of a palm in it. Why on earth would a gardener plant a palm in a hanging basket? Duh. I bought the hanging basket pre-planted at Home Depot two years ago. It looked cute, with a little palm tree in the middle and some geraniums and begonias in it. The geraniums and begonias were happy but of course the palm tree grew straight up until it hit the roof. It was very healthy but I could tell it needed to be in a better spot than 3' under a roof. Don't palm trees get really big? I kept the hanging basket on a table this year and it did fine until a freak frost killed the palm. So I chopped the palm off.

Yesterday I saw the sawed off stub of the palm tree in the hanging basket and decided to yank it out. I pulled and it didn't budge. I yanked at it and pulled and struggled and ended up lifting half the dirt out of the basket. What I pulled out was downright creepy. It was a massive root system, all gnarly like some tendrilled disease. Shiver! I told one of the boys to plant it out in the backyard somewhere just in case it might grow and filled in the huge gaping hole in the planter with more dirt.

I guess struggling with that root was a good thing to do. All day I had bent over a table forming delicate flowers out of sugar paste by hand. Tearing through the dirt with bare hands was enormously satisfying. I think I even grunted once.

Here are some of the flowers I've been working on the past three days.

Sugar paste, or "pastillage" is really fun to work with but you have to work fast because it dries out quickly as you work. The roses have to be made in stages over a course of days to allow for drying. This photo was taken before the green calyxes were added.



















The sprays of blossoms are made of hundreds of tiny white flowers, each cut out of sugar paste and then cupped and formed by hand. They add the "baby's breath" element to an icing floral arrangement. Sweet.

Cucumber-on-a-Rope

That's what we are officially growing now.
I was running around getting ready for the wedding and forgot to water the plants two 100 degree+ days last week. Alas, the cucumbers gave up the ghost. But we've got the coolest Cucumbers-on-a-Rope now! I can see it now, fruit and veggie-shaped soap on a rope, a hot item sold by Bath & Body... Just remember that I had the first idea for this.




"WHAT are those mangy looking vines on the picnic table?"

la la la ...where seldom is heard, a discouraging word... la la la...








At least I got to be an Egyptian Princess today. I sat in queenly pose on my deck throne while Pat Austin slowly fanned me with 5 magnificent blooms. Sheer bliss.




Well, I suppose I should prune the Pat Austin rose back a bit so it's not so far above eye level. Then again, since the Pat Austin roses tend to nod, they look pretty good up high.





The Scepter'd Isle is having a severe case of
Jack-in-the-Beanstalk-Wannabe. sigh. All it wants to do is climb, climb, climb. The height of one cane is downright frightening. I'm going to need a ladder soon to trim the top off. I keep hoping for blooms but if they grow at sky-scraper height we won't see them anyway. I'll have to say to my guests "Please come see my beautiful pink Scepter'd Isle roses" as I hand them a pair of binoculars.

The wedding is just 8 days away! I'm frustrated over all that has to be done yet. Instead of making the front garden nice, I'm having to invest time & money in stuff like curtains, carpet cleaning and decluttering. Still To Do is make 300 more icing flowers for the wedding cake, sew Austrian crystals on the bride's reception dress, sew ribbons on the bride's shoes, scrub and wax the kitchen/dining room floor, decorate the entire house, learn how to make a bridal bouquet, boutonnieres and six large table arrangements and finish the patio. sigh.
I suppose the patio will have to wait. sigh.


I keep talking to the geraniums, petunias and roses that they better put out some serious performance for the wedding guests! The petunias got drastically pruned about 11 days ago but they're still not looking very promising. I trimmed at least 18" from them, which created a pile of clippings.

Blogger difficulties

For past last three days I've been having trouble uploading photos to blogger. I'm not sure why. But that's why I haven't posted. What good is a gardening blog without pics?

I'm working on a couple posts that have a lot of internet links in them to tide me over till blogger fixes their uploading problem. And of course, I'm gardening like mad, even in 104 degrees.